Mountains

When I was in elementary school, there was always that day during fall semester when I’d be in the hallway and the double-doors would be open and I’d feel the outside air and realize immediately that it felt different than it had the day before. Sharper and fresher. Not yet cool, but something closer to it than we’d felt in 6 months. That was always what felt like the first day of autumn for me, and it was one of my favorite days every year. Leaving my office today, I felt it. 

Blue Ridge Mountains

Adirondacks from the Amtrak Adirondack route

I told a friend recently that I’ve been thinking a lot about mountains. What about mountains, he asked, and I couldn’t figure out how to answer. About how there’s something sinister about them, something they hide that I can never reach. For a long time, I only saw mountains through the safety of car windows. There were the Smokies during my childhood, the Blue Ridge during high school, and a very gradual creeping upward through the Appalachians--the Shenandoah, the Catskills, the Adirondacks. I spent a year working in the smallest foothills of the Smokies feeling that lure drawing me closer, and then a summer in an Appalachian Trail town at the northern tip of the Shenandoah. The dirty backpackers who wandered into town to get ice cream knew something I didn’t about the secrets the mountains were hiding. I lived in DC the next year and started driving the three hours back to the mountains on weekend day-trips in search of something I couldn’t name and armed only with a camera and warnings from Google that I probably shouldn’t be attempting the things I aimed to do. I didn’t care about the warnings. I thought a lot about time. About how these mountains were born something like 500 million years ago and they were probably as tall as the Alps. About how they’ve grown tired now and softer. Do mountains ever wear down to nothing? What will the Alps look like in 100 million years? (What does 100 million years mean, and is there a recognizable Earth within in?) Will new mountains be born? These mountains are the oldest thing I’ve ever touched, and they know too much. Autumn is always when I crave their secrets the most. 

Shenandoah

But the Rockies are a different species. I’d only ever seen them once in 9th grade when my dad and I drove to Grand Junction to pick up a motorcycle he bought on Ebay. I stared out the window of my grandpa’s tiny pick-up truck that we’d borrowed for the drive and watched the walls of rock and snow get bigger and bigger as we wove through them on the interstate. There were 18-wheelers on the runaway ramps, the life my dad once lived. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t afraid of much back then. On our way back, we stopped in a resort town just to ride to the top of the ski lift. We stood at the cafe at the top of the Breckenridge lift in our too-thin jackets for a few minutes taking in the view before riding back down. I remember my shallow breathe, but I don’t remember the view. I wonder where images like that go. 

The first time I saw the Rockies

I went back to Colorado last month, this time to see the mountains up close, this time for more than one view. The Rockies feel young and wild, taunting and unpredictable. Sometimes I felt like I was in something closer to a rainforest, and sometimes I felt like the wind would freeze my blood. I’d never slept in a tent before, never carried a backpack with every item I’d use for three days, never drank water I filtered by hand from a stream, never seen the stars from 11,000 feet, never known what snow feels like in August or how bright the moon really is. Maybe part of what draws some of us to mountains and horrifies us at the same time is the way they expose things we don’t know and can’t know and will never know. 

Greys and Torreys

Mirror Lake