Found this in a journal.  Thought I'd share.

We've come full circle.  Here I sit, anxious about writing.  I hardly ever feel anxiety anymore because I do it so often.  But this is different, I guess.  Different because I'm exercising a different part of my brain, one that has been dormant for a long time.  How will it awake?  Angry?  Timid?  How do I rub out the cobwebs and begin again?

I once advised someone who was having trouble writing to skip the beginning.  I said, instead move along to the middle or the end.  And I find that I don't know how or where to begin this journey, so I need to find a middle point from which to start.

What am I writing?  I don't even know. 

But in the middle of things, I see a fire crackling brightly with no smoke.  Its light holds back a dark and cool night, and people huddle around it, transfixed by the swirling flames.  They turn to me and call for a story.

"Tell us something of home," they say.  Remind us why we are here, miles away in a land none of us know."  I know of no story that will meet their request, but it would be rude not to give them a story.

I clear my throat and tilt back my head to the stars.  They are bright, as is the moon.  And yet the woods around the clearing are dark.  And I'm sure that satyrs and centaurs stalk just out of view, sentinals waiting to see if we will stray and be lost.

The world presses down on me. As I open my mouth to speak, my friends stare not at me but at the fire, as if the story will come from there.  And perhaps it does because I begin with a fire just like this one. 

"Did I ever tell you about my trip up Stormy Mountain?"  I see a knowing smirk on my left.  Blank stares and no responses from the rest.  "I was camping about halfway up Stormy Mountain one night in late summer.  My plan was to head up to the peak and then over to Cougar Mountain before I set out for home.  It's a cool night, mostly because of the elevation, and I'm all alone.  There's nobody for miles.  No cell service.  It's just me.  Me and the bears and the lions and elk.  I remember, I saw a wolf on that trip.  It just stopped and looked at me and plodded on its way."  I pause, but no one speaks.  A pine cone pops and hisses at the bottom of the fire.  A small stream of smoke escapes and slowly dissipates, like a lock of hair sinking into the depths of a deep lake. 

"It's a quiet night with a small fire like this one that has just gone out.  I'm in my tent about to fall asleep when I hear it."  I pause again, and I see the youngest look up at me.  To my left, the smirk quivers and then disappears.  "Hear what," the youngest asks.  "Well, I can't quite explain it," I say.  "Like a wolf but deeper.  Like a lion but longer.  Like a man but wilder.  Gutteral.  It was a howl, up somewhere in the direction of Devil's Backbone.  A long sad howl, like something that would never be happy again.  And I don't need to tell you--out there, alone, in the woods, miles from another living soul--it raised the hair on my neck.  It sent a shiver through me, like I've never experienced before.  I had to resist the urge to just run right down the mountain in the other direction.  I lay there as quiet as I could.  Barely even breathing.  'Well,' I thought to myself, 'at least it's miles away.'  And that thought comforted me for about a half a minute."  Two or three are looking at me now.  The smirk has gone serious, hiding behind a poker face. 

"But after about a half a minute, I hear a response.  This one.  This one was right up at the peak of Stormy, less than a hundred yards away from me.  Loud.  I don't think I've ever heard a yell that loud before.  Like a man's but wilder, wilder and deeper.  That's the best way to say it.  It wasn't an elk.  It wasn't a wolf or a cougar or a coyote or an owl or anything else I'd ever heard before.  The second it started, I was out of my sleeping bag and digging in my pack for shells.  It was still going.  It lasted that long.  I loaded my rifle with shaking fingers.  I just sat and listened.  Then I heard it moving down the mountain, away from me, thankfully.  But even at a hundred yards, I could hear limbs snapping as it moved through the pines, until it finally faded off in the direction of Devil's Backbone.  I didn't sleep a wink that night.  I just lay there, my rifle ready, twitching and shaking at any sound near the camp." 

"That morning, I continued on my way up to the peak.  I kept my rifle loaded, but I didn't see any animals.  When I got to the summit, I looked out in the direction of Devil's Backbone, and I thought I saw something moving against the rock.  By the time I got my scope trained on it, it was gone."

"On my way down, I headed around the north face so that I could cut back east.  I came to this shady spot just below the peak, a place where the trail was still covered in snow for about 50 feet or so.  And there they were.  I just couldn't believe it."  I paused again and stared at the fire.  I threw in a fresh log, and watched the shower of sparks spray into the air.

"What?" asked the youngest.  "What did you see?"

I looked at them all.  "Tracks," I said.  "Tracks for what must have been the biggest creature I'd ever seen.  And they were headed straight towards Devil's Backbone.  Straight at it.  These weren't bear tracks.  They weren't lion tracks.  They were too big and too far apart.  And they looked like.  Well, they looked like."

"Go on and say it," the smirk said.

I plunged in.  "They looked like human feet, except bigger.  Twice my size.  Nearly twice as far apart as my own tracks."

"There you go, boys," said the smirk.  "Bigfoot."  The fire hissed and a log collapsed.  Another shower of sparks dances quietly up and faded in the night sky.  The woods were quiet.  We all sat and stared into the glowing heart.  The iridescent ashes changing from red to orange to white.

"Is that a true story?" asked the youngest, finally.

"That's the honest-to-God truth," I replied. Would I make something like that up?"

The smirk deepened, and another formed across the fire, but the rest looked at me with wonder.  They believed.  One nodded.  The youngest looked at me with a new awe.

"Why are we here?" he asked.

"Because we have to be," I replied. 

They sit, and the air crackles with the heat from the fire.  They know their fates are entangled.  Should one string be cut, the others will fray and break.  But together we are strong.

For when they come together in this way, the world extends from them.  They make it.  Without them, the world would not exist.  Outside the firelight, the forest fades to black and trails off into nothingness.  Beyond the stars we see, there is an infinite darkness.  We make those stars shine bright.  The world beneath our feet goes only as deep as we dig and only as far as we tread.  The story makes it what it is. 

They called for a voice, one that will weave a tale and bind their fates further.  I have done my best.