I was cold, and perched next to jagged rocks and short sharp shrubbery. I could feel the ends of my toes as if they were separate to their starting joints, and I breathed low and short, in an attempt to push down whatever warmth was left in my gut, through to the rest of me.

It had been months since I started falling. Walking and climbing seemed now to be an antidote I wished I had practiced from the start; instead of running, stumbling, running endlessly attempting to know the truth of what ached me.

If there was anything I learned as a teen it was that if the slope is kind you can never fall off a mountain. One must be a goat.

As I sat there taking in the extraordinarily massive view, 180 degrees around me, eating crunchy peanut butter and lettuce sandwiches and breathing sharp windy clarity through my teeth, I decided it was finally time to descend, and face (them) my worst fears.

—
written at La Cunziria, Vizzini, Catania, Sicily, Italia, Globo, 2015