I sit at a table in an old cabin...

I sit at a table in an old cabin. Somewhere in the mountains, perhaps. Or maybe in a valley. But utterly surrounded by nature. There’s no one here—no living soul. Only mountains. The valley. The old cabin. And me, inside it. I sit at the table—an old, roughly hewn wooden table. I don’t know if there’s fire in the hearth, dancing its slow dance as it caresses the dry logs. But I feel warmth flowing into my palms, seeping through the cup I’m holding tightly in both hands. I don’t know what’s in it. I can smell mountain herbs—the gentle touch of wild thyme teasing my senses. That must be what I’m drinking. The cup isn’t the delicate porcelain I’m used to at home; it’s nothing like the white, fragile pieces my fingers have learned to cradle. It’s simple, made of clay—the kind of cup that belongs in a place like this.

I try to lift my eyes and take in where I am. Stone walls. Low ceilings. Strange wooden furniture. And that strange feeling of time—of not belonging to this cabin. No, I don’t belong here. It exists only in my imagination, born from my longing for mountains—for their white peaks, for the blizzards and winds waltzing across ridges and valleys, for the fire that performs its acrobatics in the hearth. I sit at this wooden table in that imagined cabin, while time swirls around me like a vortex. But it doesn’t carry me anywhere, and that’s a comfort. Because here, time does not exist.

I open the door and see the mountains—those I love or those I resent. They’re too powerful to challenge; no wager could ever make me their equal. There’s only one victor here—them. And I, a small, insignificant creature of nature, can only feel myself as part of them. I can feel that I belong to them, though I wasn’t made by them, nor raised among them. They are strangers to me, as I am to them. Yet it is the dream of touching their greatness—their strength, their merciless truth—that has trapped me in this cabin.

I gaze toward the darkening horizon and pray for their mercy. I beg them to let me touch that majesty. To let me become a small fragment of it. To breathe in its magic and disappear within the crashing of a snow avalanche…

I sit in that old cabin somewhere in the mountains—perhaps in a valley—somewhere ruled entirely by nature, where everything bends to her will. I sit and drink in the energy that no one measures, no one shares, no one steals. There is so much of it here that you could gather it in handfuls, pour it into yourself, revel in it, and rise from the dust into divinity.