Narnia: Pools on the Peak

At the summit, the rocky surface is interrupted by small pools, with cold liquid clear as tears. The mountaintop is a rain-catcher, cupping streams in rocky buckets from a leaky sky-ceiling.
The pools were indisputably magic. The enchantment of the climber’s efforts are fulfilled when her eyes are pierced by the sun overhead reflecting in the water, overlooking the valley below. All the elements are seen and felt.
The air of the mountain
The water of the pool
The earth of the valley
The fire in your chest
Not one thing is missing. You are always in need of something, and yet truly, in need of nothing. You are complete on a mountain top. If you are alone, you are fulfilled. You are lonely, but you are fully immersed in the presence of unfiltered beauty. Your breath is taken away, not by person, but the mountain itself. Your focus is entirely in the moment, and you partake fully, undistracted by the wants of another. The mountain itself is the medium for transcendence, you are the participant.
If you are surrounded, you share in the joy. You take it in but you don’t hold it there. You do not rest in silent meditation. You discuss the wonders before you in loud exclamation. Your experience is altered and affected by the response of the group. The experience is a medium for a mutual transcendence; the mountain is the backdrop, the means to a communal experience.
The water is proof of heaven. Pools of celestial tears.
The climber has struggled and suffered to arrive here. To stand on the summit is to be closer to the clouds.
To fill your lungs with the air up there.
To shield yourself in boulder crevice from mighty winds, beaten against the rocks as you make your way.
Temperature falling, mind and body ascending,
To lose feeling in your fingertips; to find feeling in a numb spirit.
Touched by the magic of the mountain, to breathe more deeply and trudge on more determinedly.
It all speaks of another land, a land only captured in the realm of fantasy, the powerful embodiment of myth and truth. As with the Magician’s Nephew, the wood with the pools is a place between worlds.
So it is on the summit.
You are halfway to heaven, breathing otherworldly air, yet your feet remain rooted to the rocky surface. Your spirit soars, but your body remains. You know there is a world beyond, you are close enough to sense it. You also know there is a world below, the one from which you climbed. You are in an in-between place.
It also just so happened to have pools...
As with the story, Digory and Polly realize that they cannot stay in the woods.
In the same way, the summit is not a place where you can remain. It is the height of the journey, the thrill of the view, but it is not livable for humankind. It is far too cold, too windy. Unsheltered, you are subject to all the weeping of the heavens.
For that very reason, we had to delay our climb from sunrise to midday. Even still, we were tossed about with the gusts of wind more and more as we neared the top.

There is a common feeling in both pools, the one in Lewis’ woods, and the one on my mountain trek. You can go anywhere, accomplish anything, on the top of the world.

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