Chapter Sixty
For any person going to the eastern lands their journey began at the river, and traveling across the plains was an adventure unto itself.
Once you set off you had a long journey ahead of you, but it was not particularly difficult. Facing a traveler was sixteen days of steady walking across a wide, seemingly endless plain of grass under a clear blue sky. For days it would seem as if you were getting no closer to your eventual destination.
Every day was exactly like the one before. You walked and walked, and just as you began to think you would never again see anything but grass, you would finally see a speck on the horizon. Eventually the speck would turn into a guest house where you would get a hot meal and a bed. The next day you would get up and do it all over again.
One day, usually seven or eight days into your journey, you would realize that the eastern mountains finally seemed to be a little larger. Eventually, after you had become so bored by the endless grass that you almost couldn’t take it any longer, you would see foothills on the horizon. You were almost there.
For the last two days of the journey you could see the city clearly across the plains. It tempted you, and made a person want to push to get there in one day. Some tried, and they always regretted it. Almost all were smart enough to spend their last night at the final guest house, celebrating their imminent arrival the following day.
Since it had been such an enormous and time-consuming project to build a road across the plains, I didn't know if another would ever be built. Though I believed it would be a good idea to eventually have another road connecting the two lands further to the south, I did not plan on being the one that would build it. I had to leave something for future generations to accomplish!
Because of the distance separating Kan-Eden from the rest of the nation, establishing the city took longer than usual. It was a full year before it was completed and running on its own.
Kalou and I came for a visit soon after Lataron called it finished. Though I had been there several times during its construction, this was Kalou’s first time ever across the great river. She was very impressed by everything we had done, especially the ferry boats. We stayed in Kan-Eden for several weeks, using it as a base as we took shorter trips in all directions, enjoying ourselves as we explored the land. It was the first time in many years that we had explored new places together. We even went farther east deep into the mountains, but had to stop when we encountered steep slopes and sheer rock.
“Is there a way to the other side?” Kalou asked.
“I went across them many years ago. On the other side are more plains and woodlands stretching forever to the east. I remember it as being very much like our own land. I would like to go there again someday, though I know not when.”
“But how did you cross the mountains?”
“I climbed, but that is no way for most people to cross. Only members of our family could do that, and it would be difficult even for many of us. Someone will need to find a pass though the mountains. Eventually one of our grandchildren will, and if I know them it will be sooner rather than later,” I said with a smile.
While it was exciting for Kalou and me to discover new places together, it was with some relief on both our parts when after six months of constant travel we finally returned to the capital of Enoch and settled back into our routines of leading the city and the nation.
The years passed quickly and peacefully. The western lands still expanded, but it was much more slowly now as adventurous people moved east every year. Our people had realized the east was a good land, and that was where the growth would come in the future.
Less than two years after our trip to the east one of our grandchildren found a pass through the mountains. It appeared to be a narrow gorge at first, but as you traveled further east it widened, eventually opening through a break in the mountains. The way was steep, but not especially difficult. The far eastern lands were now accessible to anyone.
The pass was a ten day journey south of Kan-Eden. Within one hundred years there was a city established on the edge of the plains, below the pass that was two days journey to its west. Though it was probably far off, as there was still an enormous amount of land to settle in this eastern realm, I was sure that someday my offspring would cross that pass to begin a new adventure, a new nation on the far side of the mountains.
That would not be my adventure. My nation was here, centered on both sides of the great river. I knew in my heart I would someday see that far land again, but I would not settle there. I would not be the one to take my people to that place. That adventure would be for those that followed after me.