The Weight of the Path

I keep a small, rusted iron key in my desk drawer that no longer opens any door I know. It is heavy for its size, cold to the touch, and worn smooth by the friction of a hand that has long since stopped reaching for it. We spend our lives collecting these fragments—the keys to houses we have moved out of, the stones gathered from beaches where the tide has already turned, the maps of places we have already left behind. We tell ourselves we are keeping them to remember the way back, but perhaps we are only keeping them to prove that we were once there, that we moved through the world and left a mark, however faint. There is a quiet ache in knowing that the path behind us is slowly being reclaimed by the silence of the earth. We are all just travelers carrying heavy pockets, wondering if the destination was ever as important as the dust we gathered on our boots. What is it that you are still carrying, even though the door it once opened has been locked for years?

Faisal Khan has captured this feeling of vast, enduring travel in his image titled The Journey and the Destination. It reminds me that the mountains do not care for our maps, yet they hold our footprints with such grace. Does this landscape make you feel like a traveler or a ghost?