Mountains

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