Why I Love Mountains: Part III

a mountain has an anatomy.

there is the neck, where the low-hanging clouds that bring the rain pass into the stunted trees. then the rain rushes down for the bottom, leeching into the soil before getting there. then mist that comes up from the ground blows between the trees.

there is the belly, where rocks that have fallen and been broken are collected and cleaned on the banks of the river in the valley, and higher up they are round and unbroken and covered in moss. still higher, where there is the humidity, the game trails skirt along the river, over the bent necks of plants, and through the packed dirt, sometimes crossing a long, flat section of rock where the tracks of the animals are dried by the sun until the next rain washes them away.

the heart of the mountain is nearly indistinguishable from the gut. the heart is where you get the feeling you came for, where you feel a communion with, and where you see the traces of everything that is hiding from you. usually it's by the river, or when suddenly the weather changes and the whole forest moves. the idea is to stop and find what's escaping you, but most people assume the sensation will grow the higher they go, and they keep going up.

the machinations of the mind can lead a person nearly anywhere, and anywhere is very far from the true desire of the heart.

every mountain has a highest point, and this, to take the metaphor to its natural extent, is the head. as you approach the head, the very earth narrows beneath your feet, depriving you of the opportunity for missteps. the world tapers until the margin between success and failure is as narrow as a single step. it is an overwhelming place. it is a human place. i have often found a feeling of emptiness atop a mountain, because it is not what i really wanted it to be.

there is the view, but with the view comes the knowledge of still more beautiful places left to climb, many of them very distant, and all of them, for the moment, unreachable. it is only the mind that could turn a success into the evidence for a new-found failure, but it does.

like the hands gathered around the planchette of a Ouija board, we tend to become unwitting participants in the ambitions of others. we trample past the places we really want to be, settling for the mean of our inclinations. sacrificing freedom for inertia, adventure for equanimity; someone whose lure is more mysterious for something that's easier to explain.