Returning

by Scout Noble

when you step out onto the deck, the air wraps itself around you; 

it smells of melted snow, rivulets of glacial water come to rest in the lake at your feet,  

it smells of fresh soil, dense thicket, and ponderosa pines. the deck itself, 

plastic woodgrain beneath the soles of your feet, 

is either frostbitten or burnt. but the view, 

the view is what you braved the wind for  

the mountains that sweep like storm clouds from either side, 

their ridgelines like moss-colored meadows, each swaying blade of grass an evergreen.  

beneath their watchful eyes, the water stretches; a pool of molten silver 

at the end of the lake, the mountains collapse into one another 

coming to rest in a small valley, the crook of some mighty elbow, 

the grey-green home of the sun, where it falls to rest each night.  

in the winter, we wrap ourselves in coats to brave the deck,  

its bracing winds and flurried snowfall threatening to knock us over, 

just to see our mountains, awash in January, 

dusted with powdered sugar and glazed with sparkling ice, 

before turning, escaping back to the orange warmth of the cabin,  

the candle in a snowstorm where we welcome in the new year. in the summers, 

the sun is a watercolor palette as it sinks toward its home in the valley; 

rose-gold clouds and streaks of poppy red fade away into sparkling velvet black,  

and we plunge into the lake until the light is gone completely, 

golden waves that part around us, laughing until we collapse and are submerged.  

some years, the sky splinters in lightning. others, we watch  

fire burn on the sharp slopes and feel as the smoke taints memories of snow-melt air. 

but always, the mountains stand watch, the tall, faceless guardians of our tiny paradise. 

and when we tire, and the sky becomes so heavy it sags around us 

slowly, surely, falling; 

we return.  

we step out onto the deck. we let the wind surround us, permeate our lungs. 

the deck is just a deck, fake wood planks, a view like many others. 

but for us, it is  

the eye of the hurricane, the place where, in the swirling, shifting rainstorm of living, 

we take a breath. we return.