Vail

Much of my life has been in the pursuit of knowledge, specifically, learning how to do something and most recently, play the guitar. That is, acquiring skills and understanding that already exist in the outer world. But what happens when there is a knowing inside of you?

You follow a feeling.

Vail is a word that suggests surrender: to lower one’s head in respect or tip one’s hat in gratitude. The mountains, like the weather, offer timely metaphors for life while veil, a word that sounds the same, offers concealment of one’s true nature.

And that is exactly what this inner journey has felt like: finding ways to express a knowing but not being able to. It is feeling the sun through a dense fog, but being unable to bask in it fully. There is a shade that obscures and confuses your inner compass, and just for fun, let’s throw in vale, or valley, to acknowledge the emotional ups and downs.

When you take this path, when you follow a feeling – it doesn’t exist in the outer world just yet. You have to bring it to life. The veil’s purpose is not to disillusion, but to help make your vision more clear. It is slowing you down so you can see only what you need, which is often, the next step.

Lucky for me, the gondola brought me to the top of Vail Mountain. Clear blue. Shades of green. Ranges that went on forever. At my feet, wildflowers. Here is where we start, at the top.