The hut below the pass

You have been walking all day, and now the walk is over.

The mountain hut stands in a hollow just below the pass, a small stone building with a slate roof and a red wooden door. Smoke curls from its chimney into the evening air. The last light is fading from the peaks around you, turning them rose and then lilac and then soft grey, and the first stars are coming out above the ridge.

You open the red door and step inside. The warmth meets you at once, and with it the smell of woodsmoke and soup and drying wool. You set your pack down by the door. Your shoulders feel light without it, almost as if they might float.

You sit on the wooden bench and unlace your boots. It takes a while, because your fingers are slow and the laces are stiff, but there is no hurry. When the boots come off, your feet feel wonderful. You stretch your toes and set them on the warm floorboards near the stove, and you can feel the heat soaking into them, easing the long day out of every step.

The hut keeper, a broad, quiet man with a grey beard, brings you a bowl of soup and a heel of dark bread. The soup is thick with barley and carrots and herbs, and the steam rises up into your face. You hold the bowl in both hands. It is heavy and warm, and you eat slowly, one spoonful at a time, tasting everything. The bread is dense and a little sweet, and the crust is chewy.

Outside, the evening has gone deep blue. Through the small window, you can see the path you walked winding back down the valley, pale in the starlight. It looks so small from here. All those hours of walking are behind you now. Your legs remember them, a pleasant heaviness, like the tiredness after a warm bath.

When the soup is gone, the keeper shows you to the bunk room. It is up a short ladder, under the slope of the roof. There are low wooden bunks with thick mattresses and woollen blankets, and a small round window at the end that looks out on the stars. You are the only one here tonight.

You climb into a bunk by the window. The mattress is soft and gives beneath you, and the blanket is heavy and warm, and it smells of cedar and mountain air. You pull it up to your chin.

Below, you can hear the keeper banking the fire for the night, the soft scrape of the poker, the settling of the logs. Then his footsteps, and the click of a latch, and quiet.

The wind moves gently over the roof, a long low sigh. The slates tick as they cool. Far away, perhaps, a stream is running down the mountainside, but it is so faint you might be imagining it.

Your body is heavy now. Your legs, your back, your arms. Every part of you that carried you up the mountain is resting at last, sinking into the soft mattress.

You breathe in. The smell of cedar and smoke. You breathe out. The long day leaves you.

Through the round window, the stars are very close. The peaks stand silent and silver around the hut, keeping watch.

The fire glows below. The blanket holds you.

And high in the mountains, warm and still, you sleep.