The Mountain Inn

The inn seemed precariously placed upon the steep face of the mountain, held in place by a few well-placed beams and a lattice of weather-worn wood. To hear the building creak in the middle of the night was to quietly wonder if this was the day it was to fall into the valley below. Sitting upon the veranda looking outward, one could not help but feel as though they were slowly tilting downwards towards oblivion (into the picturesque river below, specifically). The terror of it all seemed to accentuate much of the natural beauty there was to enjoy there, if you ever managed to find the place! There was no expedient mode of transportation to take you to the inn – no rail line nor cable transport took you straight there. The best you could do was take the intercity bus and stop off at the small town that popped up in the roots of the mountain, climb the well-worn stone stairs up to the perpetually snowed-in local shrine, then take a near-hidden trail that loops around the mountain for an hour or so. Just when you’ve grown exhausted enough to worry about being blown off the cliff face and have begun to form those paranoid thoughts that you’ve somehow gotten lost, you find yourself quite suddenly at the entrance. The owner jokes that that was why his ancestors built the place – proof of point that they were not lost, they simply found precisely where they were supposed to be.

The mountain maples,
Twisting in mountain flurries,
Become so lovely.

Prompt: from the kind writers over at the pub, dVerse, “Cold Mountain” as part of their Haibun Monday Series, celebrating the picturesque perpetual winter of dear mountain vistas.