I lie awake in my sleeping bag on the hostel rooftop. I look out across the city. Cali is aglow. The tiny lizards make a squeaking sound before they feed. Tomorrow I shall learn to climb the mountain ahead of the rain.
Perhaps the mountain, and those who climb them in solitude, is where it's at.
You have the whole ascending process with the legs and soul and heart. The bicycle traveler understands this.
But there is nothing between you and the mountain: there is no machine, and so the you and the mountain are quiet together. You will never know when the mountain will take you: "It is time," you will say to yourself, as your hands fail in exhaustion. "It is time, and rather than dying alone, I have never been more surrounded than with with love these mountains give me. Yes, I can cry now, I can feel comfort." And then the man falls in to the lower arms of the mountains, and his body now has dignity, meaning, value.
There is no older word than "mountain" in our language. It is a word for something that has been for very long. I cannot think of any other thing as old that the human has given a word to.
Verily, to die on the mountain is to die atop a the longest physical record of the world, to die atop history itself.
Perhaps the mountain, and those who climb them in solitude, is where it's at.
ReplyDeleteYou have the whole ascending process with the legs and soul and heart. The bicycle traveler understands this.
But there is nothing between you and the mountain: there is no machine, and so the you and the mountain are quiet together. You will never know when the mountain will take you: "It is time," you will say to yourself, as your hands fail in exhaustion. "It is time, and rather than dying alone, I have never been more surrounded than with with love these mountains give me. Yes, I can cry now, I can feel comfort." And then the man falls in to the lower arms of the mountains, and his body now has dignity, meaning, value.
There is no older word than "mountain" in our language. It is a word for something that has been for very long. I cannot think of any other thing as old that the human has given a word to.
ReplyDeleteVerily, to die on the mountain is to die atop a the longest physical record of the world, to die atop history itself.