Story photo challenge…

[CCoburn]

She just needed some time. Some time away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, but not only that, she needed a place where she could mentally process.

The latest results that her and her colleagues were converging upon were nearly unfathomable. These experiments dealing with the nature of reality were beckoning her to some obscure realm of the utterly absurd.

She thought of that mountain range that her and her dad would occasionally visit on weekends – it was perfect.

Arriving, she engaged in a moderate hike, summited, and sat atop a peak of one of the smaller more modest mountains within the range.

Was it really true she thought. Is reality really nothing more than just some elaborate illusion? She tried desperately to wrap her head around it. The concept was so uniquely bizarre, and she searched in vain for some (any) comparative similarity from which to make sense of it all, and then finally it came to her. The answer to this riddle of reality was hiding within her dreams.

She began making the comparisons and investigating a bit further. Are my dreams real? No, they are more akin to illusion also. I appear to be moving around in my dreams. They have the illusion of physical space, but it's not real. These dreams are nothing more than just some fabrication within my mind.

Her epiphany deepened as she quickly went from mind to consciousness. Is it possible that reality is nothing more than a product of some consciousness? If so, then whose? If it's not mine, then that means I'm just nothing but a character within the dream of some thing? A dream character? Is that all I am? She then thought about the consciousness of the thing that is dreaming her and about why this would all unfold during its dream state and not its waking state? As a whole it really didn't make a lot of sense, but only parts of it she thought. There must be more.

She then proceeded to briefly chuckle to herself about this whole dream theory nonsense as she realized it would be getting dark in a couple of hours, so she decided to call it a day and begin the hour-long hike back to the car.