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Present Day

The White Mountains

The train slowly lurches forward out of its idyllic setting and slowly starts its climb up the face of the mountain. The ever-present click and clack and thud of the cogs brings the train ever higher, one notch at a time as the excitement grows. Eyes stare in wonder and the pitch increases. Nervous laughter is heard, and the giggles and nervous laugh of children and adults alike fills the train cars. Outside, the wind is nearly silent and the sun is shining and as the train climbs higher and the winds increase, the coldness wraps around the train cars and nurtures it along it’s clickety-clack journey to the top. The silence of nature bears witness to many things. To the changing of the seasons, to life and to death. On a cold day such as this, such it was that the sun bore down on everyone and everything. Spring. And as the crackle of ice crystals as the tall spruce shook of her winter coats and the stoic fir escape the clutches of another harsh winter, a small chunk of snow, no bigger than a man would be seen tumbling down the slopes eastern face.

And as the ice explodes and discharges it’s rider. As the thousands of fragments gleam for an instant in the mid-day sun. And as the grey, tunic-wearing corpse skids to a halt halfway down the mountain on a winding turn. Who is there to notice when, after a moment, after a decade, after half a century, his paper thin eyelids flutter and his withered fingers grasp the air.