Ghost Rider
It had become a familiar sight for the wolf these past few days- the cheap hotel located conveniently enough by the side of the road. After a long day of surveying the beauty of the North American continent from the seat of his motorcycle, it was time to finally call it quits as the sun set under the horizon. For weeks, perhaps months (he had lost the sense of time as he began this quest), the wolf had been riding, from the frozen northern reaches of his homeland to the sun-drenched and humid tropical paradise far to the south in search of something, but he wasn't quite sure what and the answer to what exactly he was looking for drove him onward.
From Canada, the haunting losses- the mass of twisted metal that the authorities found his daughter Selena's body and his despondency when his beloved wife Jackie succumbed to cancer little over a year later, followed him like malicious spirits everywhere he went. And everywhere he went, the wolf's troubles seemed to follow him, it was the invisible load he had to bear.
The wolf had become the Ghost Rider, a mere shell of his former self, a wraith condemned to wander the earth. He would ride past the frozen wastelands of the north and to the deserts and mountains of the west. This wolf who had been attacked head-on by tragic losses would with a devil-may-care attitude would ride through the wilderness roads which were planned and built long ago mostly as an afterthought. For as far as he was concerned, it was only him, the well-constructed motorbike, and the open road of unexplored wilderness beckoning him onward. And he would continue riding those roads wherever they took him, for he was the Ghost Rider.
Even when the weather got worse and wintry winds threatened to freeze him to his bones, the wolf continued ferociously, still carrying that bitterness and anger towards the universe for what happened to his family. When the torrential downpours came and soaked him, still this motorcyclist would not relent. Whether it was the blazing heat of the deserts where only fools and madmen would dare venture or the roads surrounding the high mountains where a mistake could be lethal, still the wolf continued. And during the wolf's brief stays at civilization, the biker bars and roadside restaurants where he would buy fuel, food, and a night's rest, everyone seemed distant and removed from him. Though he was observing and monitoring them, the wolf was the disinterested loner taking notes in his head about the people at the hotels and restaurants and bars, not caring one whit about what advice they had for him. He was detached from the surrounding world, he would keep on riding that motorcycle through the highs and lows like a Ghost Rider.
The wolf would begin each morning on his motorbike, continuing his personal journey with equal parts patience and zeal, although even he did not know what he was aiming for. Was it the beauty of the surrounding countryside? No, the wolf had seen plenty of that, he could return home at any moment and stop this foolish errand, having witnessed nature in all of its glory. A religious experience? Perhaps, if the wolf was actually seeking some Higher Power which he was not. All the beauty of the world, all the songs of the birds, all the greenery in the trees, all the bright flowers of the fields could not bring his heart any peace for the Ghost Rider.
All he knew was his sordid past- dark and cloudy shadows on the road behind and the uncertainty of his immediate future; a dream that seemed so vague and out-of-reach became the shadows on the road ahead. Yet nothing short of death would stop the wolf now from finding his goal, nothing could stop him now. All these thoughts came to him as he began his brief stay at the hotel- the memories of success, the love of his family came flooding back to him providing his dark and gloomy past with some much-needed light and lifting some of the load that he had brought upon himself throughout this trip. The wolf had been riding on a nameless and aimless quest, he had become the Ghost Rider.
And now as he undressed and began his turbulent journey into his subconscious, a vision of something familiar, something like home came to him. He was dressed in the brown robes of a hermit an escapist who wanted to leave this world of night when he saw different types of terrain, different surroundings, each one a picture-perfect duplication in his mind of the places he had seen on his motorbike journeys. The white sands of the beaches he had rode across, the painted canyons and natural bridges, to the millennia-old redwood forests, and to the barren desert lands, a perfect replica of his soul. And then at the end of it all when the sun was beating down on him severely, he saw his wife and daughter giving him encouragement and when he woke from this dream, the wolf realized then the purpose of this journey. He was the wandering hermit, who needed to escape the corrosive effects of civilization to escape the grief and now with reassurance from beyond the grave, he could resume his quest with determination that he was actually making progress. The one thing that the wolf wanted, buried in the recesses of his psyche, was closure and an end to the mourning and almost a year after his wife's funeral he had finally found it, in a hotel thousands of miles from home.
There was nothing to stop him now, for he is the Ghost Rider.