There is a small, short valley we have to walk from the forest to where the mountain starts to rise. Torches are lit along an ancient trek, illuminating the way, casting the shadows. This is how it looks this time. In an ever-shifting reality this is how our eyes see The Valley of Doom. The valley we must cross, the last temptation, before breaking Free from the velvet chains holding us, keeping us from leaving behind our old life.

   There are places for Human Beings to seek, to find, what is lost, to make a stand against tyranny, against oppression, so abundant today. The places have many names, many points of entering. There are forests, seas and islands filled with Mystery and Imagination, of Freedom, free of constraints, of chains. Human Nature is to be Free, categorically, undeniable. Nothing else matters as long as this is not the case. There are the deep recesses of the mind, there is the Sherwood Forest, a state of mind, an undying force in Human Life, a legendary �place� as old as humanity itself. Fire, Imagination, Will. Where the human animal, the warrior poet, the wild beast, is what it wants to be, what it�s born to be, a Mountain of Torches, a power in itself. A look in the mirror and the torches are burning. Sometimes close to the calm surface, sometimes buried deep... but ever There. Yes, seek the Mountain of Torches, but know that it is ever within you...

  

A landscape like the moon,
a beauty like raw, untamed Nature.

I, a part of me, the most important part,
have ever sought the desolate, remote places,
where there can be no major human settlement.

  

  

   After spending most of the summer outdoors this year, too, including the nights, especially the nights, I finally took the plunge and once more set out for the Norwegian mountains, 2400 meters above current sea level. I've waited so long to write down my thoughts because I wanted it to really sink in... and it has. Sunk deep. And still the impressions, the experience, are as fresh as yesterday. It changed me (again) that Journey. Or rather, it enhanced the deeper natural parts of me. Some human beings have always sought the wilderness, away from the herd, back to The Nomad, The Human Being, so much more attuned to Self and Nature. Removed from civilization, the degrading and Life - destroying present day existence.