Chasing the Sunrise

Spoiler

I know this doesn't quite fit in this topic, but I'm not quite sure where else to put it, so I just ended up here. I think it's the best fit.

Please, tear it to pieces!

Stepping outside, I can feel the surroundings caressing my body. The new day is chasing away the night, a chill breeze leading the way. It flows around me, teasing and urging me on, and as a smile spreads across my face; I start running. I run through the alley and down the stairs. As I leave the last staircase behind me and enter the streets the wind picks up its pace. As do I. Houses flash past me and the wind sings as my sneakers hits the pavement, keeping the rhythm of my breath perfectly.

Pam, pam, pam, pam, my shoes say. I take a deep breath for every pam, letting it out heavily for the next one.

I know the way by heart, and steadily picking up the tempo as I run my thoughts wanders.

I ponder yet again my choice of shoes. I’d put the white ones on. The white ones with blue stripes that I’d bought for 80 Euros while in Berlin. I’d left the black ones at home, resenting them for not complimenting my feet as the slender, white ones from Nike. They didn’t even have any blue running across their sides to match my shorts.



The streets are empty. The noise of traffic and the screams of children have left the otherwise lively streets to its own fate for the night and have not quite woken up yet. As was my intention, I have entered the quiet streets before the break of dawn, and as I remember my intentions I run faster yet. I pass the park and the football field, the last bus stop and the ending road that is normally privileged for vehicles, now belonging to only me. I leave it behind.

The road here is for old couples and dog walkers, and the surrounding trees whisper my name as the ever present wind whistles through them; leaving life to ruffle their leaves. I’m closing in on my beginning, and I slow down until I’m keeping a brisk walk. On my left I can see my city folding out as a dim purple light gives away some vague colours. I turn my head and on my right the wood is crawling up the mountain as if to hide it from sight.

I round the corner and leave the road, getting my iPhone out and pressing start. The time starts running, the seconds ticking away too fast on the little screen, and I run.

The little path is snaking itself upwards, twisting and turning through the trees, forcing me a meter up for every third step I take and tugging the breath out of my lungs. I can feel the sensation of power within as I conquer one step after the other in the endless and everlasting struggle against myself. Every new height is a victory, and as the sweat is running down my back and down my nose I smile. I smile because through the pain, it feels so good. My feet are aching but I can feel them working, never failing and never hesitating. Always pushing just a little bit more then what my brain agrees on as reasonable.

You’d think it would come to an end in its time, but it doesn’t. This daring road is everlasting, and the second you imagine it to have a finishing line you lose. For however far away you tell yourself it is, it’s further. So in your mind, you scream at your body. You tell it to never expect release or emancipation. You tell it to prepare for forever, for you know that forever is what’s ahead.

And after pushing my body to its limit so that it realises that now it can’t get any worse, and after making it believe from its core that this will be the course of its eternal existence, I tell it to suck it up and keep going. So it does. It keeps going,
and going,
and going,
and going,
and going.
My mind blends with my body, no longer controlling it – simply living through the hell I created for my own. Then I reach the stairs. The amazement of this hits me, and with renewed will I run the first one, step by step. My breath succumbs as I reach the top, protesting against me and telling me that enough is enough. So I walk the next one, wishing for the ability to curse under my breath, but forced to use my energy on gasping air and spitting it out again to make room for more. I reach the end of the last stairwell, knowing in the back of my mind that I’m close to the end but not for a second believing it.

Pushing myself against time I race it upwards. I am aching in a way that can only be achieved from trying to catch up with time; a perverse feeling of victory as I tag along at its heels and a gruesome pressure from inside that is telling me to give it up. Let time fly on its own accord, as long as you chase it you will never reach it. Fuck off. I’ll be dead before I give up trying.

And then I see it. The finishing line is right there. Only seconds away, less then ten if I offer my body over to time. So I do. Keeping only my mind with me I close in on the finishing line, pressing my iPhone to stop the time. 18.27. My personal record is shattered, the new one taking its place, thirteen seconds younger.

Tears escape from my eyes as I fall to my knees. My chest is rising and falling rapidly, and I sob from the pain I hadn’t quite felt until now. I can hear my blood pulsing in my ears and I fall over, giving up my fight against gravity. I roll over on my back and watch the skies as my breath slows and my pulse gets its regular rhythm back. My vision is blurred from my tears and I can barely make out the birds floating about in the air above me. But I can hear them singing, and so I close my eyes to focus on their morning song.

For a long while I lay there, cursing myself for the torture I regularly put myself through and smiling as I think of my new record. Slowly, I open my eyes and let them take in the familiar sight of the stunning view this spot offers. The sea is lazily stretching itself into every corner and little glitch. The mountains stand proudly over it, bathing in their glory. Scattered across the patches of flat earth are houses upon houses, big and small, new and old. The city is waking up, new sounds barely reaching my ears as the early risers start the engines of their cars in systematic harmony.



Standing up slowly I look around, searching the top of the mountains for a glint of light giving away the suns position. Finally I find it, and I run over the small hills that surround me to reach the highest spot I can find. It seems I have miscalculated, for the sunrise won’t happen for another thirty minutes.



The wind is blowing all around me, undoing my ponytail and flipping my hair around my face. It is cold in the absence of the sun and as I look around I realise that if you had asked me whether it was light or dark, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.

I get my earphones out and put on some music as I wait. Moving around on the rocky surface of the mountain to stay warm I start moving to the beat. It gets a hold on me, and before I know it I’m dancing. I’m dancing and singing at the top of my lungs, blissfully unaware of the notes I miss. The world is at my feet and I am dancing before it, swinging around and waving my arms, not caring about my lack of rhythm or my ability to follow one. If I were in a musical, this would be the scene where I realise my potential.



After I while I stop, gradually making my movements smaller and slower until I eventually come to a halt at the edge of a cliff. I sit down on it and peek over the edge. My white sneakers sway happily back and forth underneath me, précising how very little is holding them safe. I can feel gravity pulling me down, wanting me to reach the bottom of the mountain so that it can forever keep me underground after stealing my life away. I hold my breath and ease backwards, not getting up or moving too quickly.

I glance towards the mountains hiding the sun and realises that it has already started to rise, only I cannot see it. I have to reach the next hill to see the actual rising and the second this hits me I plunge forwards onto the path that I’ve walked so many times before. This time I run.



I reach the water in minutes, seeing the hill at the other side of it. The picturesque view is stunning, the reflection of the mountain is caught in the still water and beams of weak sunlight escape over the mountaintop. I cross the bridge and run the path civilization has created for me. As I reach the other ends of the water I see that what I thought to be one hill is in fact three different ones, the next always higher and bigger than the last.



Fearing that I will not catch the rising I pick up the tempo and follow the path up towards the first top only to have a massive swamp between the first and the second hill revealed to me. I swallow hard and watch the hill on the other side of the swamp. The light there is more visible and beautiful than it was when I tried to glimpse it from my previous location. I know that if I continue on this path I will get to the other end in time, but time isn’t on my side.

So with careful steps I start on my way down the hill. Big holes are everywhere, and I do my best to stay out of them as the black insides give away promises of unknown dangers. My bare calves get scratched from the stiff bushes I walk through and as I make my way through them I can feel my skin being ripped through. Then I miss. My foot plunges into one of the black holes, causing me to trip and fall over.

Panic grips me.

Snakes!
Snakes are all over the place! I know snakes are all over the place and STILL I went into unknown terrain where now I can’t see where my feet land or what they land on. Oh my God. I scream so that the echo of my voice pierces through the woods surrounding me and I get up an RUN AND RUN AND RUN. Tears fill my eyes only to leave them and streak down my face and I sob and howl as I crawl through the bushed, never never never seeing the ground and always always always knowing that the next second I would feel a bite pierce my ankle and shoot venom into my veins. getmeoutofthis! get me out and never let me back in. Who will find my body? I think in a moment of crazyness and the thought have me almost giving up. My steps are quick and always leaving the ground the second they touch it. I have to get out.

My shoes are getting soaked but I can’t master the will to care. Then I reach the rocks that are the beginning of the next hill and start to climb them.
They ease me, make me comfortable and calm.
I could fall any second and if I then got away with a break I’d consider myself lucky. But I don’t.
I climb up and up, always finding the hard and solid foundation of the mountain to support me as I put pressure on it.
Patiently I caress the hard stones, looking for a grip so that I can haul myself yet another notch up, always trusting the mountain blindly to stay steady and hold me up.
I’ve been climbing since I was a child, always reaching for a top to conquer. I’ve been climbing with my sister in climbing halls for a couple months.
But this is like nothing I’ve ever done before.
Looking down I see my bare feet, rasped from my thigh to my no longer white sneakers and bleeding, they are standing at the edges of the mountain, high above the swamp below.
The fear that had so entirely gripped my body moments before was washed away and replaced by a great calm.
I keep climbing steadily, slowly making my way and finding the right spots to place my weight.
Then I reach the top. I ease myself over the final edge and stand up, triumph swelling in my chest.

Below me on the other side of the hill is a wood and I begin my way down to it. I can feel time ticking away from me, stealing away the sunrise. As I try to hurry I stumble and fall, tumbling and rolling all the way down into the woods. I land hard on my stomach, my breath knocked out of me and my mouth filled with grass. I look up; I’d fallen quite a long way. I shrug and get to my feet. I might as well have been thrown into a fairytale, it looks so idyllic. Trees are scattered around, standing on a soft blanket of grass and wild flowers. The sun is barely shining through, glinting weakly among the treetops. I run though, feeling my feet leave the ground with ease.

Then I reach the foot of the next and final hill, this one is not as steep as the previous so I can run upwards. As I reach a high tempo my body pulses with joy. Soaring through the air I feel freedom from gravity and I know that I will never love anything as much as I love the mountain.

As I begin to slowly reach the top something clicks in my mind. The sunrise won’t be here either. I can see it shining over the top, flowing over and caressing the tops of the hills I have already put behind me. But as I near the top more and more I realise that there will always be the next hill behind the one you can already see. This is Norway, the mountains are never ending and their hills will never be the last one.



Gasping for air I grab hold of the mountain in front of me, I’m almost at the top. I just need to climb this last and sudden wall then I will be there. Reaching up to get a good grip I start to climb. I easy myself upwards, closing the distance between me and the top. And then, as I haul myself up over the last piece of mountain that I will conquer today, the sun hits me.



In all its glory it lays there, bathing in the air and lazily flowing over the mountaintop. I scream from joy and throw my hands in the air as the orange light surrounds me. As close to the sun as this I have never before been, and the experience is like nothing else. A feeling of victory and accomplishment fills me, and the stunning light caresses my face. I stand there for a long time, watching the sun slowly making its way over the top of the next hill, easing itself towards me.



Finally I turn to find my way back. After having grown up on the mountains I know that if spend some time I will find a path to lead me home. But who has the time to follow the ways of others when you can make your own?

"Idunn Sofie: I'm glad it turned out okay ^^"
Okay?... It's bloody fantastic. I was merely expecting to see a few pictures and maybe a paragraph or two of writing. Instead, you weaved the series of events seamlessly into the presentation of your photos. Those extra descriptors add a context that actually gives the photos an emotional significance. They're just like... blahrlgarhalh brilliant!

Idunn Sofie wrote:I pass the park and the football field, the last bus stop and the ending road that is normally privileged for vehicles, now belonging to only me.

Idunn Sofie wrote:I turn my head and on my right the wood is crawling up the mountain as if to hide it from sight.

Both these sentences show exactly what I'm talking about. You placed me right there with you, and I loved it. Each little struggle and hurdle that came up really held it's height. The title 'Chasing the Sun' is absolutely perfect for this. I really can't say enough for how much I like this piece. The only thing I saw that I would change is:

Idunn Sofie wrote:This daring road is everlasting, and the second you imagine it to have a finishing line you lose.

Then onto the pictures themselves. I know they were only taken with an iPhone camera, but they're stunning. The first photo of the street and the last look back down the mountain to civilisation are breathtaking. And watching the light gradually getting brighter and brighter in each photo is great. I mean, do you have a spare room I can just live in so I can get up and watch this every morning?

Massive props for the whole thing. It was worth staying up for!

This is great. Just one thing, the pictures are a little big (at least on my computer they are).

Not a littlebig, they're very big. I couldn't even see them properly. You should resize.