Frozen Path

I walk, I never stop walking. The wind lashes my face, freezing it. The snow-covered earth stretches out to the hazy, misty horizon. I don’t know why I walk, why I live. Nor do I know why, in the end, I will decay beneath the ice and darkness. My question is ignored by the budding vegetation waiting to burst into a blanket of flowers next summer. My skepticism about existence is resisted by the plants that take shelter and remain alive in the depressions of the rocks. The fragility of my desires and affections accompanies me as I advance through this inhospitable landscape. I see myself climbing steep slopes like goats do, trying to defy gravity, or cunningly and stealthily hunting elusive truths like the arctic fox, or wandering in search of spiritual nourishment like the polar bear I barely glimpse in the distance, adapting to an uncertain and changing world, with an equally uncertain and changing will, preyed upon by doubt and the hostility of the incomprehensible. My memories sprout ephemeral like flowers in an early and misleading thaw, soon disappearing in the icy wind of oblivion. My eyes only capture fragments of reality, while the vast world extends beyond the imaginable. My ears search for the beat of the universe, but only perceive the whisper of the wind speaking truths in unknown languages. My thoughts and emotions fade in this endless whiteness, chilling me to the bone with its intense cold. And so, weakened and reduced, I tire of searching for a path, a direction, a certain and definitive reason to keep going. The beings that cling to life seem to teach me a lesson with the fatalism of their constant struggle to exist, accusing my vulnerable consciousness of weakness and inconsistency. They accuse me of not fighting hard enough to stay on my feet, to not fall defeated. Was it supposed to be this way? Who could know?! As I advance through this frozen dream, my questions become frost that melts and fades away. But I walk, I keep going, like the muskox that defies the storm seeking to knock it down, while my thoughts delve into themselves, trying to decipher my place in the mystery that surrounds me.