Member-only story
Are We Distracting Ourselves to Death?
Losing sight of the sacred one day at a time
All along the raging river, tiny fires bloom in the gathering night
The air turns to glass. Up here, above the town, the nights are still cold even in May. But some days dawn bright and glorious and red with the wild heat of summer.
It’s a melancholy feeling to walk through the swaying forest above the lake at sunset. Beautiful, with the heart-piercing beauty of sad songs and endings. A reminder of everything we’ve lost. The natives still call the lake sacred, but disease wiped out the society they knew. Now, it’s come for us too.
And not all diseases are caused by a virus. Bit by bit, the way the water flows out of the lake and into the river that charges through the valley, the sacred has slipped away from us.
We were all made for a world that no longer exists. We travel over mountains and along rivers and into the darkest forests to reclaim what can never be ours again. That sense of timelessness we glimpse only briefly, the bright beauty of the world that all fits together. The campfire smoke slanting through the trees as it catches the last strands of sunlight like bars for music we’ll never hear.
