LOOK AROUND.
Behind you the forest is thick, gray-green and silent and dark. Craggy pine trees stand in crowded clusters, shading the mossy ground with pointed shadows. Shafts of fizzy daylight dribble through the canopy onto the cushion of leafy undergrowth, dispersing into a pulsing green glow.
You stand at the edge of the wood, on a path that cuts faintly through the bearberry bushes and the ivory grove of birch trees. A deliberate path, but obscured, half hidden by undergrowth and fallen hemlocks. Where does it lead?
You follow this path, this stony stream, through a carpet of scarlet and yellow wood lilies as it curls out of the woods and into a billowy meadow of golden-green beach grass. The air, now a salty mist, carries a quiet, far-off rumble, the groan of the distant ocean tides.
This path, like all paths and all stories, leads forward, through the calico grasses and thorny rose brambles, toward the horizon, toward the sky. But after a mile, or many, this path ends abruptly, where the ground falls away at what feels like the edge of the world. Only air, white and blue and yellow, and sea, white and blue and black, lie in front of you.
You step back from the unexpected precipice at your feet before peering warily over its edge. The cliff is vast, red-black and craggy, its narrow ledges populated by lean clusters of daredevil pine trees rooted precariously in the rock, far above the muffled waves and frothy whirlpools that snake and swirl through the rugged outcroppings a thousand feet below.
This bluff is a wild place, endless and open. You are alone here.
And yet, the air here is alive.
You trace back toward the woods, away from the cliff and into the taller grasses. There, you come upon the weathered remnants of a low wall of mossy granite, crumbling in places but solid. Beyond the wall, huddled against two hulking, primeval boulders, are the hollow remains of an ancient, neglected stone building. The structure, just big enough for a small dwelling, sits alone on this bluff, roofless and exposed, its forgotten threshold facing the open sky. Still farther on, a low rock, flat-topped and smooth, an altar, rises from the grassy ground.
In the distance, a wood bird argues with a seabird, shrill voices trilling across the meadow. The breeze strengthens and swirls, weaving through the grasses, and gathering clouds twist lazily in the sky. You lie down atop the flat rock and listen. The wind whispers, hums, groans. You stare at the every-colored sky above and listen.
Whose path was this? Whose altar? Whose story lived here?