HIGH on a MOUNTAIN

Five college classmates reunite for a road trip when Zack Hoam, whose music career is launching, texts radical-activist, Jode Thomas, the conservative D.C. lobbyist, Thane Van Buren, Andi Heller the NYC actress, and Kirby Sikes, a world-viewing, possession-less, smiling homeless Buddha sort, and all are in. At Jode's house the first evening, the quintet converses about cell phones, social media, snacks, childhood, and children, Zack being the only one with a child, a girl, now eight, and never met. After dinner, everyone fixes a leak in the roof. Next morning, Kirby has backed out of the trip. Thane - “Your bag's packed, but you're not coming?” Kirby: “I'm homeless. My bag's always packed.” Kirby agrees, upon two conditions. Everyone must be honest about any topic, and they all must head to a mountaintop Kirby knows that will instill the first tenet. Barreling through a rural-road protest, the quintet heads for a hot springs. As music and conversation ensues and the afternoon wanes, they steer to Kirby's mountain, where legend has it, if anyone camps on this particular plateau, under the twinkling cosmos, their hearts and minds will open and everything humanistic and heavenly will be revealed. Relationships strain under the cosmic swirls of mystical light, the bong gets smashed, and in the morning, Kirby is dead in his sleeping bag, or as Bodie the Mystical Mountain Man tells them, “dead again,” the conundrum being what to do with Kirby's mortal coil. While not coveting the experience, all are in favor of carrying Kirby down, except Thane. “He's homeless. Who's going to miss him? We walk down and get on with our lives.” Kirby is carried down, and in the van ride to Boulder, a flatulence situation reveals Kirby is not deceased, merely proponenting his Tibetan practice of lowering body waves. Back in town Zack finds his daughter, completing the circle of reunification as each returns to the progression of their lives, little changed, but with much to ponder.