August 31, 2012

• To build a home

  A man was given a grant by the king to build a home anywhere he liked in the kingdom. The man was joyous with gratitude, for not only had the grant been given, but the means and resources with which to build a good, dependable home. The man set out at once from the notary’s office with the grant to claim a place at the entrance to the forest to build his home. Everyone in his village had always said the entrance to the forest was a wonderful place to build a home, and the man agreed for his own reasons that he knew were solely his own. Thus, he set off to build his home.

  As he walked along the tree line of the forest looking for a good spot he ran into a small bulgy man with well made clothing. He was not from the local village, but was a traveler from another place. He said he knew many people and had seen many things, and a good place to build a home was inside the forest where there was a clearing with a pond and much game in the area. Then not only would the man have the privacy of the forest but all the things he would need to eat and live, and he could visit the village from time to time if he needed to. This sounded good to the man, so he went into the forest to look for the pond so he could claim it and build his home.

  When he had found the pond a voice came from behind him and the man spun around to find a short cloaked figure asking about his doings. The man explained he had a grant from the king and was going to build a house. The cloaked figure said that he had lived in the area for many years and recommended the man go to the foot of the mountain, which was truly a good place to live for the precious metals to be found in the mountain and the great thing it is to have a house so close to such a magnificent object of nature. The man was of a good build – suitable to mountain living – and thought this was a good idea, so he set off to find the foot of the mountain where he could build his house.

  The foot of the mountain was not at all like the man had imagined. The man had expected a clear mountain, but this mountain was covered in trees. The idea of living both in a forest and on a mountain appealed greatly to the man, so he set hiking up the mountain to claim the land for his house. He found a clearing halfway up which seemed like a good place to build, but as he looked up toward the darkening path something told him that there was another good place to build further on. So he kept walking and by now had worked up quite a sweat. But he would find a place to build his home.

  Past crags and ditches, gullies and crevices, bushes and thistles, trees and boulders, the man walked and walked and walked. There were clearings by streams and copses with openings in the middle but the man kept heading higher and higher up because he knew there would be a best place of all to build. Eventually the trees grew less dense and he walked on bare stone once more, and in the tiredness of his journey he realized that he was close to the summit of the mountain. He stood in a basin surrounded by rock walls that impeded his view, but twenty paces ahead of him was a slight incline that led to the mountain’s highest peak. He walked toward it, stumbling a bit, and crawled up it. At the top he froze and looked out. There before him lay all the kingdoms of the earth, a whole magnificent world he had never dreamed of while living in his tiny local village. His grip loosened and the grant, which he had been carrying excitedly, fell to the ground.

  There he dropped to his knees, put his hands to his face, and wept. 

  • 3:43 am
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