A small creator stood partway up a hill she had been climbing for nearly a year. The expanse of the hill stretching before her. She shielded her eyes against the sun, wondering if the hill she started from was only continuing to grow as she walked one foot in front of the other.
She had set out at the beginning of the previous summer with a sketchbook, a computer, and a quiet vision of what she wanted to make. The hill had been gentle at first. She did not realise she was climbing. Each day she made something small and put it into the world, and each evening she returned home with the work in her hands and a sense that the path was opening before her feet.
For a long time, the climb felt like progress. People found her. Small celebrations were sent out into other people's homes with her creations a part of those special moments. A bride wrote to her one February afternoon and asked her to make a wedding invitation in the same language as a child's storybook, and from that single letter, a whole new line of work bloomed. She passed milestones quietly. A badge appeared next to her shop name. Her work began to look like a brand rather than a hobby. The hill, she thought, was being kind to her.
Then, in May, the path began to slope upward more steeply than she had been prepared for.
For fourteen days, she walked, and the view did not change.
She had not stopped working. She had made some of her best things during those fourteen days. A teapot pouring sculpted florals across a cream plaster panel. A storybook cover with wisteria draping down the spine, a small bow above the title plate, the words Once Upon a Time pressed softly into the cover. But the path beneath her feet did not seem to be moving, and the view at the top of the hill did not seem any closer than it had been when she set out.
It was on the fifteenth day, with the sun low and the work finished for the afternoon, that she first noticed the vultures.
There were three of them.
The first vulture was called Delusion. It was the largest of the three, with a slow and patient circle, and it had been watching her for a long time without her knowing. When it spoke, it spoke gently, almost reasonably. The work is beautiful, it said. But beautiful work and a quiet shop, side by side for too long, begin to mean something. Perhaps the trust you have in what you make is not faith. Perhaps it is a story you have been telling yourself.
She had not heard that voice before. Not in those words. She had expected the climb to be hard. She had not expected to be made to question whether the climb was real.
The second vulture was called Dilution. It flew lower than the first and spoke in a friendlier tone, the way a colleague might. You could make the path easier, it said. Soften the work. Broaden the palette. Make it more like what others are doing. The brand you have been protecting, the beige and the cream and the sculpted blooms, it is too quiet. Make it louder. Make it more like everyone else. She knew that voice better. It had been with her on and off for months. She had not listened to it yet, but each day on the steep part of the path it grew slightly louder.
The third vulture was called Disappearance. It was the smallest of the three and the hardest to see, but it circled the closest. It did not speak in sentences. It spoke in feelings. No one is watching. No one will ever watch. The work is being made into a silence that will keep being silent. You are climbing a hill that nobody can see.
The three of them circled, and she walked, and the path kept sloping upward, and the view did not change.
She thought, for the first time since she had begun the climb, about turning around.
Though, she did not turn around. She simply kept walking, because the act of putting one foot in front of the other had become so ordinary by month eleven that it required less effort than stopping would have. But she did pause, and she did look back down the path she had already climbed, and she let herself see how far she had come.
The path behind her was longer than she had remembered.
She thought about the bride from February. She thought about the badge beside her shop name. She thought about the brand voice document she had written so carefully that a stranger could now speak in her tone. She thought about the storybook covers, the tea party invitations, the small celebrations sent out into other people's homes. She thought about her children, who had watched her work in the soft weekday afternoons all year, and who had not once asked her whether the climbing was worth it.
The vultures kept circling.
She did not chase them off. She did not have the strength for that, and she suspected they would have come back anyway. Vultures of that kind do not leave because you ask them to. They leave when the thing they have been waiting for does not happen. They leave when you keep walking.
So she kept walking.
The crest of the hill was still ahead of her. She could not yet see what was on the other side. She could not promise herself, or anyone else, that the view would be worth the climb. She did not know whether her shop would flourish or fade. She did not know whether the bride from February was the first of many or a single beautiful accident. She did not know whether the brand she had been protecting would, in the end, be the one the world rewarded.
She knew only that the work was good, that the path was real, and that the slow part of the climb was, perhaps, the actual shape of the journey rather than an obstacle in it.
And so she walked on, with the vultures circling, and the view still unchanged, and the sun beginning to set behind her.
If you are climbing your own hill this week, with your own vultures overhead,
I hope you walk on too.
Warmly,
Chelsea
ChelseaLamontDesign
