* Hello Mountain

Not far from my house is a little mountain. Hill maybe, I’m not really sure what the correct geographical name for it is.  But I like to think of it as ‘my mountain’. I’m not sure anyone knows this. It’s part of my secret inner life, conversations I have with myself.  Anyway I love this little mountain.  I can see it from my studio window, my living room window, and my dining room window.  My kitchen window faces north and I can see a different mountain through it.  But it’s just another mountain to me, though I’m sure it has a name, I don’t know what it is.  I’ve never climbed it, so I don’t know that mountain as a friend, though it is nice to look at.

My mountain is my friend. I have lived with in viewing distance of it for 20 years. I have always thought it was beautiful to look at. The sun greets me each morning as it peeks over my mountains crest, then turns it bronze and amber; purple shadows filling its gully’s in the fading evening light. In spring wild flowers of every sort cover it in sheer loveliness. Rains wet its rocks turning them to sparkling jewels when the sun comes out. Once it caught on fire, brush and trees burned, later blackened and dead.

Sometimes I can see tiny shapes from my window inching slowly up its face, standing on its peak.  It makes me smile. I know my mountain is happy to have the company and I’m glad for that. I too know the joy of reaching its top.

The times in my life when I have struggled with a difficult place it has been to this mountain I have come.  It welcomes me as I climbed it to work out my sufferings, to offer up my prayers; as I sat upon its rocks, it welcomed my tears.  It held me up as I looked at the world below and realized in the grand scheme of things, my problems are not so big.  

Sometimes I have just walked its trails in the peace and quiet it offers enjoying nature and the rhythm of my heart, the constancy of breathing in and out. At other times I have climbed my mountain as a workout moving over it quickly, earphones in my ears, to burn off those extra few pounds that creep up on me every year over the holidays.

 These days I don’t climb her as I once did. I have neglected her, withholding the gift of my footsteps upon her surface. I have enjoyed her from a far, loving her from my windows. Once I stopped my car at her foot, rolled down my window and whispered a promise, “I’m still here, one day I’ll be back!” She sat there still, unmoving, contented as always just to be. I admire her for that. Something she has been teaching me these last 20 years. She’s my friend; and I have loved my time spent with her.

Now my days are busy and filled with grand children; soon they will be old enough and then one day I will take them with me for a little visit.  I’ll let them get to know her as I have.  My mountain can be a friend to them too if they choose. So I’ll see you later mountain, we’ve had some times together, and there are many more yet to come.

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