Just beyond this hill, he said. I didn't know what he meant, but I couldn't help but feel that great heights like the one I had just reached existed only for the purpose of letting a man feel how far he really had to fall. As I looked up, then forward, then down again, I began to feel the weight of each crag we had climbed climbing back up over me, and I remembered my valley. In my valley I knew no want, no joy, and (it dawned on me now) no pain, and there was no great height from which to fall. My ears began to ring. My heart began to pound. My eyes began to blur. And for the first time in my life, I began to take a deep breath to scream.
But before I could let it out, I was interrupted by another sound, most unexpected: a bellow.
"Ha! Freedom." My friend looked at me and smiled. Not a deceitful, beguiling smile, but one full of hope and sincerity. "Let us continue our journey." Rather than scream, I staggered, and nearly fell. The tumble, I'm sure, would have killed me, which I might have welcomed at that point. Instead, my good friend caught me, and lowered me gently to the stone ground.
I woke to the sound of a crackling fire. To this day, I don't know where the wood came from, nor the meat my good friend was roasting, nor what the meat was. It didn't matter. My back hurt. My head hurt. My spirit was broken. At the very least, I could eat a good meal without having to bother with the where and the what of it all.
I ventured a question, "How many hills have you climbed before?"
"I keep no count of past climbings, only future, of which there will be one," he said.
I felt this as a rebuke, but he did not seem to be rebuking me. He seemed to be teaching me. I had learned so much in the time since I had met him. Maybe this was the next lesson. "Will you be my teacher?" I asked.
"My friend, what did you think I had been doing?"
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