It was in early March when he went for a solo excursion into the hills surrounding The Somerville Grand. It was shortly after his father had died, and the trip was intended to be a means of processing the resulting void that the death had resulted in him.
On his person he carried provisions for three days, a bedroll, a map, a compass, and Thoreau’s Walden as he went off in whichever direction that best suited him in that moment. After all, he had no itinerary nor intentions beyond getting away and maybe even lost.
And over the course of two days, he succeeded in doing just that.
He ascended a trio of peaks, each with a view more magnificent than the last. He made camp atop two of them, taking advantage of the fair weather that had so far accompanied his travels. It was a miraculous adventure filled with insights into both himself and the world through which he ventured. He made peace with his father and maybe even death itself.
But on the third day, when he made to head in the direction that he had assumed to be the straight arrow back to the Grand, he trekked all afternoon finding no familiar sights. Come dusk, he had begun to suspect that he hadn’t an earthly idea of where he was.
He began to fear that he might have stupidly become one of the nearly sixteen hundred people to get lost in national parks and forests every year.
As such, the following day was filled with dread. He ate the last of his food for breakfast and every subsequent moment offered less and less assurance. Even with his map, wet and dirty as it was, he could only guess which contour lines he was ascending with each forward step.
Terror soon gripped him and in the approaching darkness he began to run through the trees, sprinting in a desperate attempt at escaping the swallowing maw of the forest that held him when suddenly… his feet skid to a stop as a crack of thunder erupted overhead. Before him, nestled between a trio of high boulders, was a hole in the forest’s floor... A cave. He looked to his map, hoping to find it referenced somewhere so as to give his location context, but as he did, he heard it. Singing. Singing as if he’d never heard singing before. Singing of interlacing harmonies that dovetailed with a pitch reminiscent of Mont Saint-Michel itself.
Without thought, without prudence, he neglected his practical pursuits, placed the map into his pocket, and descended the craggy entrance.
At reaching the level floor within, he was met by a long corridor with a rounded roof, like that of a subway tunnel dragging off into the darkness, the singing continuing ever blissfully upon the walls.
It was then that he saw it.
Far off in the dark distance shone a sparkling dot of light. Like that of Jupiter in the early morning. Again, thoughtlessly, he carried towards it, blindly pulled by those heavenly chords growing louder and louder with each step.
When he finally drew near enough to see things clearly, he tried—as best he could—to comprehend what he saw. Hovering in the air, no taller than his face, was a ball of a light so bright that he couldn’t bear to look at it. But that wasn’t all. Directly below it, resting on the jagged face of a boulder… was a book. A tremendous tome. He bent down to pick it up, but just as he did, noticed a shift in his shadow upon the rocky ground. He looked up to discover that the orb ascending upward toward the jagged roof of the cave. And when it met and traversed that ceiling, he was doused in darkness… and silence.
Suddenly, a tremendous, awful fear pressed upon his skin from the depths of the cave. as if something truly awful was peering at him from a silent darkness, now undeterred by heavenly light. As quickly as he could, he carried the book in his arms to steadily retrace his steps out of the cave, guided only by the rapidly fading light of dusk pouring in from its entrance.
When he finally emerged back into the rain, he ambled forward through the trees to make camp under a nearby outcropping of granite. There, he made a meager fire and looked upon the book for the first time. Its cover read Tome of Instruction.
He opened it, and on the very page that he flipped to were specific directions on where to go and what to do. And not just vague instructions, but specific directions from the exact seat from which he read the words.
‘Sleep until morning then face the aspen. Turn 45 degrees to the left and march forward.’
He looked up in the light of the fire to see a lone aspen in the surround foliage. Naturally he was dumbfounded, but in the first light of morning, followed the directions verbatim and marched through the trees. Just as the book had instructed. Just as it said. And after only a few hours of following its directions, he marched into the lobby of the Grand with the book grasped tightly to his chest.
He tucked it away, fearful of its implications.
He tried to forget it. To let it be.
But eventually, as is our affliction as human beings, curiosity got the best of him. He neglected his instinct toward caution and on a sleepless and stormy night, pulled out the tome to again peel back its pages. He couldn’t help but wonder: what directions would it have for him in the safety of his home? What instructions would be given to a man in leisure?
He creaked open its spine to a random page, considering the words that met him in a lightning’s flash.