by Parris Match
After traveling up and through the wide cut between the mildly sloped golden-brown humble mountains; the people over-looked another vast, lightly dust-haze covered, visually undulating desert; and far to the west they would have justly foreseen, a darkly purplish high range of glimmering snow-crystal peaked mountains. These highest mountains with three conspicuous reflective frosted summits, white spired crowns sparkle and glitter, in the glowing effect of the latter day Sun. Where there was the white crystalline bloom of the latest new snowfall, there likely would be a dependable supply of pure flowing water. Therefore, the eager people accepted their next transitory objective goal; but they passively settled-in for the night, and would enter upon the prevailing desert at the first breath of dawn, of tomorrow.
At the first favorable light, the people began their renewed journey, across the next barren desert, towards’ the far-off, yet brightening, snow-covered mountain peaks. Climbing up and over the infinitely changing low mounds of loose rock and soft unsubstantial sand, sparsely covered with, tenacious and waxen, low grey-green scrub; required scrambling up the slippery slopes of the many hilly demands, could not be readily avoided, to keep their chosen course. Dropping into the confusing labyrinth of small rugged gullies to sightlessly reach out in every direction and passing through those numerous crossroads of the occasional brushy hollows. Those difficult decisions filled with thickened brambles of thorny brittlebush, lone scraggly gaunt spikes of deserted fallen trees, and gathered straw-yellow tufts of tall withered grasses, of the possibly inevitable various roundabouts.
Coming slowly around a sharp bend in a high-sided gully, the leaders of the column of tired quietly shuffling people, were taken aback by the instant encounter with three conspicuously startled, dark-tawny and scrawny, naked and disheveled strangers, standing on even ground, in the midst of a well-beaten down grassy hollow. Both the alarmed people and the stupefied strangers stood in stunned astonishment, one or the other seeing the never-supposed, in this dry and empty, long forsaken place. The outnumbered strangers, noticed scruffy and colorless men, caught terrified, suddenly bolted; adeptly darting into the prickly, thicket and surrounding, crackling underbrush; and soon, still within view of the bewildered people, scampered over the ridgeline of a near distant mound, and instantly vanished.
Dahmoh’ah immediately ordered scouts to an elevated promontory, overlooking the rolling dull graveled hillocks, to observe their surroundings. Without delay they scrambled up the bank of the ravine and loudly reported back that they could see the timid strangers flittingly running far-away to the south, but could not identify any additional indications of encroachment. From this point on, a scanning flanking guard was constantly in position on the tops of the knolls as they progressed. The people labored on altered faithfulness, trudging straight through the barren withered landscape, not far from the brightened yellow, Sun-lit parallel range, of low rising and falling tawny mountains to the north. Weary from the long day’s forced march, but in closer clear view of the inviting snow-capped mountains, the people crowded together in a shallow brush-free crater, within the crest of a mound of wee-graveled sand, to pass the cold well-lit night.
During the deserts’ illuminated, twinkling star filled night, with the emitted added brightness of the moon in its beneficial fullness; an instantaneous southeast wind, showing not a slightest scintilla of mercy, blasted over their hardly defensible position. The sudden tempest, somewhat chilling, those huddled and pocketed people; while fierce whipping gusts of the demons, pelted them with a thin blanket of stinging harsh missiles, of variable essential silicate and infinite timeless sand. The following act in response, gradually forgiving, equalizing winds, slowly ceased in the revealing moons easy passage, and the compact people snuggled peacefully in their guarded gravelly nest.
Rising excited and focused on the point of the golden arc of dawn, they struck out towards their awakening, a clear bursting revelation, of the magnificent and lucent, snow-capped and craggy, towering mountains. Within a brief time the people entered upon a broad sugary field of highly piled virgin sand-dunes; quickly losing any sight of the lesser grey-brown graveled mounds behind them. The Forgotten Ones’, relaxed dragging footprints, winding through the freshly blown dunes, were the only invasion of life, in this pristine setting; the route of their journey, from white sand to white sand to white sand. Suddenly, a longeared brown rabbit appeared in front of them, standing alone in the sandy vale of whitest nothingness; affright in panic, the foolish rabbit scurried, to and fro, to and fro, and then quickly disappeared over a collapsing and yielding liquid dune.
Ahcoo, faithfully following closely behind his mentor, Dahmoh’ah; youthfully blurted out, “Aie…, The timid little ragged rabbit runs away, like the frightened desert strangers”; “From the terrifying ferocious people; The strong powerful Forgotten Ones”.
Dahmoh’ah and the people within close hearing, hooted and whooped, in the diversion of amusement.
It flashed back into Dahmoh’ah’s mind, the mysterious speaking skull they had portentously heard before leaving the river valley. The intentional warning tripod, conspicuously hanging with many narrow long strips of rabbit fur; a clear message to the real unwanted trespassers. Dahmoh’ah declared offhandedly, “Aie” “This wretched inhospitable desert is where the feeble little Rabbit People live”.
The same people hooted and whooped in response to Dahmoh’ah’s incidental observation.
Within an uncommitted time-span, the shuffling people departed the unblemished bare sand dunes and dropped down onto a flat, polished rock-strewn, swept to the clay, sterile bleak plain; the lethargic travelers drawing nearer to the seemingly barren low first foothills, of the final great kindred arrangement of the Spirits; those three snowy glistening peaks of the ultimate mountains.
The lesser rolling suntanned mountains to the north, keeping their same horizon-line of course, had come to a gradual end; then a wide inclined depression, an open northwest threshold, between them and the insignificant foothills; therefore a black fringe of extended lava flow rock spines, reached up to the lower evergreen partial hem, of the rugged range of snow covered peaks.
A severe sided very narrow gully, exiting the broad depression, jaggedly cut vertically through the center of the useless cemented earthenware floodplain. The people stomped upon the edges and easily clambered down and then out of the ineffective collapsible clay-sand gulch, and eagerly stepped-up their pace, across the quick remainder of the exposed stony clay plain. To stand before the sand blown doorstep of the eroded golden trivial foothills, in the foreground of the wide-ranging, seemingly perceptible, impassable mass, of an upper sandstone demarcation. A splendid reddish-tan tall stone wall blocking the way, into the desired interior of three magnificent, towering most high above, rust/ charcoal, spectacular snow-capped mountains.
The people gathered together and some brothers sat in circled council; Dahmoh’ah dispatched several scouts along the outer limits of the low foothills to seek the most expedient means of access into the heart of the mountains interior. The scouts eventually returned; one scout announced how they had explored a short distance into a shallow sandy breach, between two similar eroded hills, and had sighted a small blue-sky lake, nestled in a steep-sloped basin, surrounded by short cliffs of bright roseate-pink sandstone, and hurried back, to report his find to Dahmoh’ah.
Dahmoh’ah immediately lifted-up the withered people and led them in the direction of this presumed favorable gift of the Spirit.
The proud scout led Dahmoh’ah and the people to a barely discernible shallow dry watercourse, angling back into the common lowly foothills. Hiking not far into the inclined gently-sloping sandy groove, and on reaching the top of a rock-solid rise, they all viewed the distant glimmering inset sapphire blue lake. Nearing the lower contrast of the sunken lake the disappointed scout and the frustrated people recognized the unfortunate tell-tale indications of bad water, a wide white ribbon surrounded the shoreline, and the short encompassing cli
ffs were not of hard clean sandstone, but of crumbling walls of leaching red clay; and the closer they got, it became more obvious, the pungent smell of the dead lake invaded their nostrils, another sorrowful thirsty period in the peoples long mourning. Looking across the inner puffily clouded blue lake, they could guess the unclear suggestion of a channel that might have once deposited water into this whitish neglected sink. The people circuited the noxious, long not remembered, sulfated lake; stepping nimbly upon the deserted, closely placed, scum encrusted stones; aside the steep, tightly marbled, banks of the still recessed basin of lifeless crystal clear water.
Reaching the far side of the placid lake the people climbed the dry rocky bed of the time-worn, much longer not remembered stream, and then started around a curve entering into a small winding ravine. Passing beneath a large over-hanging rock outcropping; they soon closely discovered a narrow accessible angled crevasse, which pierced into the unknowable interior of the sandstone mountain. Once in the narrowing canyon, the deeper the people penetrated, the walls became higher and higher; the ever so slight inclining floor of the threatening chasm found sandy smooth, with a few brief steps of detached large chunks of fallen-rock, to lay solitary flat-like cut slabs, split from the sheer and excellent facets of the chiseled cliff sides. The people abruptly came up against a massive dam of enormous mountain-boulders, tightly packed in blue clay; the largest boulders alone were taller than two men standing on each other’s shoulders. The barrier stood as high as ten men; the people clawed and scratched their way over the stopped blockage, dragging and heaving their many possessions and provisions, to the elevated opposite side. Continuing to struggle up the sterile canyon, for not that isolated stem and flower or a plant, or a single blade of grass was found here; the people again met the next barrier of huge jumbled boulders, and had to repeat the arduous task of reaching the alluvial silted other higher side, of this difficult impedient second obstruction.
Plodding softly, on the now impressed pliant sand, still further upward through the danger of the exacting canyon, the people met still another obstacle of stacked malevolent boulders to overcome, which roughly drove them to the point of absolute exhaustion. It was apparent that the liberal stream of the three Mountain’s water, which had originally formed this chasm, had not freely flowed from end to end, in this abandoned passageway, for a long forgotten unknown number of eons.
Finally to breach the diffused light of the overshadowing abyss, breathing a sigh of relief on a shallow, widespread, platter full of sand, the people gazed delightfully across a wide open upper divine picturesque vale. With the precipitous lofty glorious face of the towering mountains, soon darkened hovering above, as the splendor of the radiant golden Sun neared the closing of the day. Relieved to be out of the crushing boundaries of the hazardous canyon, the people gathered before the discharge of a rocky and graveled wash that hardly ever drained into the canyon they had barely departed, but in the soft lower sandy last deposit they camped in peace for the night. The Forgotten Ones had just settled-in, when the golden-orange-pinkish aura of the welcoming Sun Spirit, glistened beyond the acute charcoal ridge, just below the outlined white cragged snowy caps of the soaring mountains final, silvered and gilded in a halo, silhouette.
The people awakened on the greyish new dawn, shivering in the cold shadow of the great wall of solid rock they had just traversed; anxious anticipation pushed them to set-off immediately, to explore their recent wondrous discovery. To wend their way up the graveled wash, the people arrived at the summit of a low spine ridge, which curved and wandered from the north; and overlooked a beautiful wide canyon valley; more than beyond their faithful vision, extending far to the south.
Where they were situated, the face of the Sun had not peeked over the unbroken beige sandstone barrier, they had just come from; but it shone brightly on the upper facade of the immense rust-streaked bronze cliffs on the other side of the valley. The rising Sun slowly revealed a mammoth muddled stack of huge assorted bulging mounds of marbled rock to the north, a preceding silent landslide in behalf of the primal ancients. Fresh daylight leisurely exposed their irradiant coats of soft whitish yellows, subtle washed pinks, and muted pastel orange, interspersed with broad streaks of white-faded ribbons, with the accented semblance of silver and gold; cresting into the cragged lower cliffsedge of the high forested, dusky-green, mid-slopes of the higher mountain range.
Turning their heads, partially hidden by the round of a rock covered hillock, the people could discern the tall grass and reed covered shore, of a wonderful lake in a long green verdant basin. Giving the impression to run the length of the valley; for the green tops of many tall trees and the guessed at lower blanket of green dense shrubs, visibly extended far down the middle of the valley. The Forgotten Ones soon stood on the summit of that rocky hill, cautiously admiring their new found haven, and they carefully scanned this breathtaking most beautiful valley.
After a considerable time of watching for any movement in the valley, the people thirstily advanced into the green basin, and on approaching the tall-grass and brushwood and reed screened lake, the comforting full warmth of the Sun awakened the dormant senses of the people. The awe-inspiring splendor of this vivid colorful landscape, the clean unadulterated invigorating aromas, the chirps and twitterings to a high trill, pleasing song fest of the birds, filled the vacant hearts of The Forgotten Ones.
They followed Dahmoh’ah close around the north end of the lake, parting an undefiled pathway, footprints through the fresh sweet grasses and sprinkled pure white daisies, of a soft and spongy untouched green meadow; startled quacking ducks, to skitter through the disturbed stalks of the dense slender reeds, skimmed across the warmed steamy pond, and took noisily to the clear blue sky. On the western side of the lake the land gradually declined from the abrupt base of the towering cliffs into the dampened watered basin and placid reeds-circled lake. Dahmoh’ah and the people sauntered along, near the edge of the lake, but the dense thick sedge and spiked bulrush prevented them from traveling to close to the waters touch. The people came to cross a, tall grass obscured, burbling streamlet in a shallow rocky ditch, emerging from an opening in the cliff of the mountain, which gently tumbled down the slight gradient slope, and emptied into the fenced reedy lake. Dahmoh’ah directed the agreeable people to halt and lay at rest, gathered beside the babbling flow of water, and then to set-up camp; the guarded afternoon and evening and through the fireless night was spent in pleasant glowing observation and comfort.
The next morning Dahmoh’ah dispatched a perfect number of scouts to carefully explore and survey the entire valley; in particular, the questioned, previously noticed, extended beyond their view, southern portion. He himself physically inspected the original source of the brief little brook, set very deep inside a cavernous sky lighted alcove, within the high imposing cliffside. The expectant gift of drinkable water, sent forth by the gracious benevolent higher Spirits, was gently expressed from the mountains full-breasted heart; through this willing breach in their granite garment, by many small, time-worn fissures, scattered down the cliffs lined intent. Tiny little tinkling waterfalls, heart-felt tears from those fulfilled smiling ancients, to join and cascade down the wrinkled rock facade; joyfully splattered, and happily spattered, and playfully splashed in the recessed hidden rocky surface pool. The wonderful gratifying sweet pure water, constant trickles and dripped before, and now within a mossy darkest-green tunneled grotto, and glimmering emerald facets of a perfect geode; changing light display, wavering possibility, fluid shadows, and shaded sparkles of the most greenish glade; in the sometimes misty, darkly clouded then lighted, reflective seclusion of the cool melodic niche.
Dahmoh’ah instructed the encouraged people to quiet themselves and to remain hidden beneath the cliffside, within the tight pleated skirts of white and green, an excited quivering grove of spotted aspen, until all of the scouts, had returned and reported, on their close observations of the unseen valley.
Two of the scouts
returned soon after mid-day, reporting to Dahmoh’ah, that the northern boundary of the valley, amongst the gigantic heap of a jumbled mass of enormous fallen rock, contained tight narrow winding sandy-floored gaps leading into their interior that ended abruptly, with no sign of a pathway or entrance into the valley. They had climbed and explored the total terrain covered by the colossal pile of collapsed rock, long fallen from the mountains heights, and found no hint of a utilized, two-footed or four-footed, accessible passageway to the upper foothills. On their way back they had discovered a very small lone waterfall and shallow pool, tucked back in a tight placed grove of spindly trees, not far from their present campsite, singularly discharging its lesser promise from the kind mountain-spirit’s fountainhead.
Dahmoh’ah had sent two scouts to walk the base of the precise eastern sandstone perimeter of the valley, along the lower prehistoric strata of the sheer wall of rock, that the people had previously passed through to get to this beautiful secluded place; also he had dispatched two additional scouts down the mid-extent of the valley. Night fell and Dahmoh’ah was deeply distraught with worry at the extended absence of the missing scouts; when suddenly out of the dark as pitch all four of the returning scouts, announced lowly by a thrice vocal hoot-hoot-hoot, walked into the unlit secreted camp.
Sitting in the restrictive dark, the impeded animate scouts related to Dahmoh’ah a small degree of what they had just discovered. They conveyed that they had sighted or encountered no one and had seen slight evidence of prior occupation in the valley, but nothing that was near-recent. Dahmoh’ah, on the murky side of safety, denied the lighting of the fires, until he could achieve a clear understanding of the valley. They would have to wait until the morning light, when Dahmoh’ah and a full assembly of deliberate brothers, from a higher vantage ground, could overlook the whole valley, and should receive a complete and concise report from the scouts, on what they had perceived.
