Mining For Light

   I have been outside. I lived out there for a long time, and sometimes it seemed like I occupied space that others lived in. The problem though, was that no matter how hard I tried to live outside, I wasn't really living. I thought I had at least a few qualities that would buy me a spot outside, but I was sick, and though people couldn't tell by looking at me I still had an invisible repellant that must have made my aura appear black. After so many years of being alone, I decided to find some kind of light. It no longer mattered how I found it, but my desperation drove me further inside, and ultimately into a darker place.
   I needed to find a way to aquire my own light. I tried to live on the water so at least I would see the sunset every night before dark. The massive horizon was too much to behold, and the sun rises and sets over every landscape. It was time to find another, less open habitat. I needed to return home. My native soil was the only place I knew. It had been a lifetime since I had seen the mountains, but I still knew the land as if I never left. Maybe I never left. It is possible that I left my heart and soul there.
   I settled in the most isolated part of the Rockies. After a few weeks of eating dandelion leaves, it was time to set out. I knew where to look, and once I got there I was sure that it was where I belonged. The place was adjacent to a glacial melt that fed a river that flows through two states. It was an abandoned mine that was closed down in the late 19th century. There was once a small community there that was wiped out by an avalanche, and the tragedy was too great for the operators to return. The only signs that there was life there are the remains of a few cabins and the tailings from the mine. It must have been terrifying.
   The portal had been sealed for almost one hundred years, but it wasn't sealed by the hands of men. Mother nature sealed it with her insistence that man stop destroying her domain. As soon as my hike took me far above timber line, I began the excavation of the portal. I moved the rocks out of the way by hand and by foot. This mine was built on the side of a slide rock face, so gravity is working in my favor. The rocks and boulders roll down with little effort on my part.
   When I reached the original opening of the portal, my efforts slowed to a crawl. The further into the mountain I dug, the more I felt like I had finally found solace; I was finally inside. Like any mine, the rocks inside weep. There are streams deep inside of mountains that have no recognizable origin. The smell is something like a mixture of a musty room, and metal. The metallic smell doesn't come from gold or silver; it comes from iron, rusting in it's most natural state. There is really no smell like it.
   After twenty three days of digging, I came to the end of the boulders, and the beginning of a solid rock surface. I found nothing but a cold, dark place. The light I was looking for was not there. My solitude denied me light as handily as people did outside. There are no voices. There are no birds to serenade my thirsty ears. There is nothing but a cold, wet rock in front of me. I was prepared for this. I was prepared to live out my days in this mine. I don't know how long it will take, but if I drink enough of the metal laiden water flowing from nowhere, it won't be long. The poison of lead and mercury and uranium will surely shorten this dark life, lived inside. If only they would have noticed me on the outside, maybe I could have stayed there. No one ever cared to show me how to find light, so I will die alone in the dark.