It was the 17th hour of the trip, and finally the mountains were appearing one by one. They crept up silently when least expected, growing in number and size. They slowly crowded around, closing the aperture to the sky, whose color deepened to a dark blue, true and bold, adding authenticity to awe as the first snowy peaks appeared. The tallest ones were still far away, but just within eyesight as the morning awoke. Jack loved being there, so much nearer to the atmosphere than he was at home.

He sat squeezed into the well-researched position least likely to abet motion sickness as they wound through the beginnings of Monarch Pass. Even without the sloshy, rocking momentum of the charter bus, he had already gotten a headache from the restless conversations going on around. They built up quickly and filled the vehicle, the sound compressing into a miserable drone of insincerity which lulled him to sleep the night before, and then shook him from it early this morning.

He’d been to this type of thing before, and the collective’s whitewashed facade was sickeningly familiar. It was altogether enough to question his acceptance of the invitation to a mountain retreat with 42 other people he’d never met in the first place, but he was generally happy to take any excuse to visiting Colorado, and he was hoping to make a few new friends while he was at it.

A man directly behind had been issuing a discourse on morality for the past hour. His row-mate chimed in every couple of minutes with little affirming grunts and repetitious sound bites. Across the aisle to his right was a woman with her ears headphone-plugged and her nose stuck in a Bible, having yet to speak a single word to another human on the trip so far.

Jack stood up in the aisle and looked ahead to the road winding through the rocky hills and evergreens. He began a slow pace toward the front of the bus, looking to the left and right for someone who seemed honest, available, and willing to enjoy the view.