ABOVE QUEENSTOWN

Allow me to express—my head feels like a nail gun target, throbbing each time I bow my head to spit. My throat is soar, tight, and itching. I can’t resist the pepper-tickle urge to hack and cough. My jacket is speckled by rain. Surly there are bags beneath my eyes.

Surly there is salvation at the top of this gigantic mountain.

Tree-roots and shards of giant fractured rock form the stairway leading up, winding through the greenery. There is dirt under my fingernails. Leaves squish beneath my boots. I’m panting, lungs expanding, touching needles as I breathe.

There is a large wedge of stone embedded in the earth, forming a crude shelter in the side of the mountain. I scramble over the slick dirt, tripping on branches, and collapse on my ass beneath the ledge.

It’s a quite place—the type of bizarre chance-structure that harkens Middle Earth, Hobbits, and mythical quests. I almost wish that I was bleeding—a gash in my side perhaps, or some other such battle wound or sword cut—just for the tough-guy, barbarian opportunity to remove my armor and cauterize the legion with a knife-blade over a small, open fire.

The horse stirs below, tethered, stamping nervously. I need rest, sleep, time to heal—who is this disturbing my mount, and what?

GOBLINS.

They’re scaling the hillside on all fours—ugly, scaly, oily things with twisted faces and deformed hunching bodies, yellow eyes aglow, glittering in the encroaching darkness. Wincing, I slide the sword from its sheath and brace myself for the onslaught.

I adjust the satchel at my hip and withdraw a water bottle, drinking. It’s getting cold again. I’m coughing, damn it, and my imagination is running wild. I drag a book from the bag and spend a half-hour reading in the cool, calm twilight beneath the trees—relishing the lush, fantastical landscape and the Hyperborean comfort of my primitive, stone sanctuary.

Eventually I return to the path, ever climbing, ever onward and up, toward some unmistakable doom or destiny—watching for breadcrumbs.

I’m very far now.

The trees are left behind, lower-level sentinels, guarding these precious high places and peaks. I’m viewing their tops from the sunlight, seated on a jutting rock, when I notice the goats—goblins—scampering down the nearby cliff-face.

Their progress is slow, confident, meandering, hooves seeking hold in the stone beneath the weeds and brush. Their leader—a bearded, wizened, and Satan-horned devil—is watching me, eyes brimming with stoic indignation. There is nothing majestic about his frail looking, goat figure and face.

I’ve ventured this climb—the known, supposed 8-hour, Ben Lohman Peak—mostly off trail—fuck the trail—and this is what happens.

The head-goat, with his long, dark beard, is now very close—ten feet away—examining me with indifference. I rise to my feet, collect my satchel, and move away from him only to be affronted by another grouping of goats, lying in the tall grass. Their heads turn.

It seems they have surrounded me.

What the hell—what kind of freak-show movie is this, and how did I end up here, surrounded by several herds of questionably bloodthirsty wild goats?

Headlines:

YOUNG MAN SLAUGHTERED BY GOATS

Great.

Fucking great.

What are they going to do—head-butt me to death?

This wasn’t an appealing thought. I walked between the goats, no problem, and proceeded up the mountain, toward the peak. They didn’t give me any trouble.

Once I reached the top, an hour or so later, exhausted, I beheld the canyons and the snow-capped mountains opening before my eyes, Queenstown, small and scattered, beneath me, the 50-mile lake shimmering, lost in the distance on either side.

Damn, what sight.