A hill

Joaquin, the blogger I miss the most, wrote this (I figure) the last time he went to the hill, before leaving Berkeley:

"Farewell to a Kingdom...

It is with a great sadness that I am to leave this my kingdom forever. The courteous magestic mountains have granted me leave of the slopes of this Hill that I so hold dear. The skies of Winter have set upon us, and the path of Spring leads me somewhere else, where trees and breeze verse in different tongues.

I come to bring you this news, and I also come to tell you that even though I will be gone, this Kingdom will exist in perpetuity if not by the grasshoppers and the mosquitoes alone, then by the stories long told after many generations in the form of children's songs. So forget not your loves or your spites, for they will live on even after the last dawn comes to shove us all into the unknown.

Remember the gates that fell by the enemy's iron, never forget the foothill that makes you look upward and into the sky. Carry the story of the pub across the street, and the warmth of the candles perched high upon the street. Tell no one of the nights you spent watching the stars, refusing to count them."

It's a great piece of writing, one that makes me feel happy about the times that were, the people I met, the hills I climbed.

That hill.

We would go up there and pretend to study. We didn't have pot, but we had a pack of Camel, and a Kingdom at our feet.

And the peace.

The colour of the sky.
The green of the grass.

The ant, the notebook,
the lighter.

It won't come back, but nobody will tell you about the nights spent watching the stars, refusing to count them.