The man walks on the mountain

The mountain is called Despair, so why would a man in his right mind climb to the top, where the lost causes live?

The mountains are usually cold and dark.

The ground is uneven, hard and the path is full of slippery stones. 

The closed forest covers the man's face with branches and insects. Insects bite you and the branches scratch. 

Hands, eyes, face, legs, no exposed skin was spared.

The animals make strange noises to try to remove the strange man from his territory.

Some just want to scare, others want to threaten him and others even surround him waiting for a breach.

The man is not angry, but neither is he relaxed. 

He is as alert as any other animal that passes through those parts.

He strokes his chest and walks upright. 

He is neither sad nor happy. 

He has been walking for so long that even his callused and experienced feet hurt.

A fine drizzle falls over the forest and moistens his clothes which, when faced with gusts of wind, leave the man's skin exposed to the cold.

He's not mad.

He likes the smell of the forest during a drizzle, the noise of animals and insects at sunset, the sensation of the cold, rigid stone of the great mountain being pushed under his feet.

He felt alive, awake, with a fully awake soul and body.

This does not mean that he was comfortable, or happy that the animals were surrounding him and the drizzle was falling.

 He's just grateful. 

That he can see, smell, and feel the surrounding forest.

That his clothes make the cold bearable.

That the drizzle is fine and the wind is not very strong. 

He is going to visit his mother, she is still alive, healthy, and loves him very much. 

This is what makes him most grateful to be able to hike the mountain.

He takes her a pie, with his grandmother's recipe to remind her that she loved her too.

He brings her medicine, so her tired bones don't have to go down the mountain.

He had helped her with the garden, so she could cook him a delicious dinner. 

Soon, winter had come.

The animals will no longer be there to greet him with their guides.

The insects will all have died.

The rain had only touched the ground in the shape of snow and the only smell the man had smelled was that of ice.

But in the winter his mother will be moved to an asylum.

The man had never walked on the mountain again.

Anyways, he is grateful that he can do all this over again.

That is why, even when the rain gets stronger and makes the rocks more slippery, the more vigorous wind pushes the tree branches against his body, the grunts of the taller animals, the man continues to walk on the mountain.