Wanderer’s Rest

I have been wandering for quite a while- across dry plains and up arid mountains, searching for something I caught glimpses of in the distance.

I came upon a labyrinth one day, and chose to go inside it. The walls were dry and dusty, quite plain, and as parched as the landscape I had been wandering through. But as I journeyed through the labyrinth, I began to notice something strange.  On the walls were words. Plain, ordinary words, written in a plain, ordinary hand. They dotted the walls here and there. And here and there, in the dead ends,  I saw the dusty remains of skeletons, and bones.

I persevered, and soon the words become sentences on the walls, still plain, making simple statements about ordinary things. A few more skeletons remained in the dead ends here, dried out from the heat. Farther along, I began to see paragraphs and stories, all written plainly, ordinary, with nothing of any particular interest in them. The skeletons were fewer here; obviously fewer people stopped here. Perhaps fewer people made it this far.

Still I walked on, with my eyes on the changing walls. The path here began to show a little  mossy vegetation, a few vines were trying to grow up the walls, and the nature of the writing began to change. Stories appeared, exciting and interesting. They were written in all sorts of fancy handwritings and bold colors. They shouted “Read me!” and “Come journey with me!”.  I read them, and journeyed with them, deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.

The air was fresher now, and sweeter, and the dead ends were fewer. I could hear birds singing and hear a breeze rustling through leaves. I had been quite tired, and wanting to stop (although the skeletons made this seem quite ill-advised) but now I felt energized, and walked quickly through the last few turns to the center of the maze.

I stepped out into a forest. The labyrinth behind me was gone, and all there was was a forest path. I breathed deeply of the sweet fresh air and sipped water from a streamlet flowing from a rocky outcrop. The path ahead beckoned, and I set forth with a good heart. It wasn’t long before the forest gave way to a garden, and set in that garden was a large and lovely manor house. It looked so peaceful, and restful. I was filled with a longing to go and knock on the door, to see if there was a place for a wanderer to rest amid the beauty and the peace.

I sat in the garden for a while, my heart racing with trepidation, and screwed up the courage to go and knock. Finally, I approached the front door. As I came up to it, a woman came out. She looked at me and said, “You look as though you need a place to stay. Would you like to join us, here?”

I smiled, with a smile as huge as the wanderings behind me, and said “Yes, please.”

I am installing myself in a room now. It is not a large room, because they are too echo-y and chill for me.  I have a window seat, with blue embroidered cushions, that overlooks the garden through leaded glass windows with tiny diamond shaped panes. I have put down a slightly threadbare oriental rug, and set a big comfy chair near the window.  A blue knitted afgan with cables is draped over the footstool. The walls are full of bookshelves and books and paintings of the sort that I can fall into, and my favorite tea cup is on a table by the chair, along with lots of fresh white paper and smooth flowing pens in vibrant colors.

All the words and stories I saw back in the labyrinth are with me still, slightly faded, like dreams,  and I know which ones I want my writing to be like- exciting, vibrant, intoxicating. I have come to my wanderer’s rest.