An Unexplored Country

 To The Lady on the Train,

There are some distant vistas, perhaps because of their distance or maybe because you can only catch glimpses of, that hint of paths and destinations and places to explore that make them so attractive. It is the unexplored country of imagined valleys and sunlit mists on the edge of sight that holds so much mystery and promise. Yet to go there would be to destroy the magic; the forest becomes just trees, the misty meadows become nothing more than fields of grass, and hill become a chore to climb. 

You have always been that alluring horizon that I cannot help but wish to visit and explore. You are towers of an unvisited city gleaming in the setting sun. You are the river sprung from snow capped mountains running its course through untamed lands and over breathtaking falls. You are wind swept plains and deep quiet woods. You are the rainstorm, and you are the bright warm sunshine. 

To venture to your lands and get to know you might break the spell of allure and dispel the intrigue.  That is the risk one must take, and I could not stop myself. You are the enigma that breaks the paradox, for to visit you is only to discover that greater mysteries and magic are always just beyond my sight. Even the places where I have visited change, familiar yet not completely the same. The earth shifts underneath me even when I am not moving. You change the colours of the flowers and the direction of the wind. The calm becomes a storm only for the storm to give way to bright sunshine. And I am amazed.

I do not want to change your landscapes; to erect no structures, to move no hills nor change the courses of streams. I want to breath your air and listen to your voice in the trees. I want only to see the wild lands and to know them as they are. But even to tread here as lightly as I can is to part the veil of mists and to leave my footprints. Even the shadow I cast is a change to your sunshine that I cannot help. 

You are the distant vista on the horizon. You will always be the unexplored country. There are lands and seas that can never be reached. You are a dream that changes as soon as it comes into focus. You change and that is the magic.

And I will watch your changing landscapes and all your beauty.

The Man in the Station