Thus began my journey with my good friend. I could not believe that I had lived my whole life just on the other side of freedom. I felt some sense of loss at this, but that was entirely clouded over by my excitement. There had existed all my life a place for which I should have longed, and I was finally on my way there!
In the beginning it was easy. The slope was gentle, and the grass was soft, and I was being driven by the excitement of what I thought would be a brief journey. Everything I saw looked beautiful and wonderful to me.
At first I said, "I have never seen grass so green and so soft. I think that , if I were not on my way to freedom, I should like to spend some time sitting in it, and admiring the way that it blows in the wind."
"Yes," replied my friend, "the base of the hill is fair, and easy for the eyes and feet, but no beauty is as compelling as the beauty of Freedom!"
After some time had passed, the scenery began to change. The grass became more sparse, and rocks and boulders began to sit along the ground in its place. This I also marveled at.
"What a world this is! There is so much that I have missed by sitting in my valley. I have never seen any rocks that sparkle as these do, and I think I love the grass all the more here for its rarity."
The hill had also begun to grow steeper, and this I marveled at too.
"It is such a joy to walk uphill. I never realized how dull and flat my valley was."
"Your sense of wonder makes my glad," said my friend, "but do not love it here too much. We are journeying to a far greater place."
After this , huge crags loomed up before us, which would have made me weary had it not been for my amazement, and my eagerness to make it past them to our final destination. To make it past this we had to use all of our strength. We had to jump to reach the next ledge, and then pull ourselves up with our arms, using our feet to push once they could find a place. Though my eagerness did not depart, it was challenged. Every time I made it onto a new ledge I would lay facedown on it, sapped of all my energy. Once i had rested a while, I would look up, hoping to see nothing in front of me but a descending hillside. This, however, was some ways away.
Finally, my friend and I climbed one ledge that seemed to push us especially hard, and beyond our limits. After this, we lay for a considerable amount of time. Exhausted, but still not discouraged, I finally began to rouse myself.
"Shall we go now, then?" said my good friend.
"Yes," I managed. "Let's go." Reminding myself that I had no need for extra energy, since Freedom was waiting for us on the other side of this hill. I mustered up the extra bit of reserve that every body keeps for itself in case of an emergency, and rose to my feet, prepared to climb another crag.
At this point my eyes had become so accustomed to the sight of another ledge that I had almost forgotten about the possibility of anything else. This made things all the more shocking when, once I found my bearings on my feet, I looked straight ahead and saw a blue sky.
To try to explain the joy that this view brought to my heart with words would be like trying to explain love using math. It will suffice to say that the joy was very great.
This joy, though, was very short lived. As I stood at the top of that fateful hill, heart pounding with adrenaline, and began to lower my eyes ever so slightly to behold Freedom for the very first time, I saw something exceedingly unexpected…the peak of another hill.
Perplexed, I sought to question my friend and traveling companion to solve this riddle, "Are there more mountains in the land of Freedom?" I looked to him to receive his answer, but his eyes remained fixed on the horizon.
"Freedom, my friend, is just beyond this hill."
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