Secrets of the Mountains

This morning I woke up with mountains on my mind. I can't seem to get the images out of my head. In my mind's eye I see rows of lofty, bald peaks flanked by blankets of dark green forests. I view them from afar, across deep valleys, hazy and brooding against the horizon. Near the tops, above the treeline, I see patches of late summer snow lingering under shadowed cliffs.

The other images I see are the dark piles of stone at the top of the peaks. They are sculpted by the weather and ice into strange forms standing along the crest of the mountaintop. They seem to be waiting through the gloom of the overcast day for a full moon on a clear night, or for a magical alpenglow, so that robed figures can appear and dance along their bases.

The mountains in my mind are images of real mountains I saw on a recent drive through Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The road through the park winds over a high pass, rising above the treeline to 12,000 feet. Near the top of the pass, I found a pullout and stopped to take in the view. I noticed a paved foot trail winding up the hill to what appeared to be the broadly crested peak. The wind was cold and most people were staying close to their cars. I decided to walk up the trail. I put on a jacket and started hiking. After an initial ascent of several hundred yards, the trail broke onto a broad, rounded summit. The ground was a tundra environment, adapted to the perennial cold. Wildflowers and ground-hugging plants were the only vegetation. Briefcase sized rocks were standing on edge, propped up in their postions by the almost constant freezing and thawing of the underlying groundwater. I saw a pika gather stems in it's mouth and then scurry into a hole in the rocks. I heard a high pitched bark, and then noticed a marmot nosing through the wild flowers a few yards away.

In the distance, on the very highest ground, I noticed a pile of rocks. At first I thought it was man made, possibly a rock shelter built by the Park Service. As I walked closer, I saw that the formation was natural, although the man-made trail wound along the base. I noticed other rock formations eroded in bizarre shapes. In the rocks I saw stacks of color, or more like stacks of contrast in the colorless light of the overcast day. I saw mushroom caps of black rock sitting on rocky white stems. Further up the trail was a house-like form of jumbled black and white stone. I saw the black was layered and swirled with dark gray and pink textures, and the white was speckled with colors of light pink and orange, and was flecked with glistening, metallic-looking mica.

I felt an intimacy with those mountains as I walked along the trail. I felt that they were sharing their secrets with me. Far off I could see other peaks. Some were lower and some were a bit higher, but they were just like the peak that I am standing on, created by the same geological processes. My breath was slightly labored in the thin air of 12,000 feet. I saw, but I could also feel, the history of those mountaintop rocks. I saw the layered look of the dark rocks, and I sensed their creation as layers of mud at the bottom of an ancient sea. I felt the chaotic energy of the magmas welling up from deep below and forcing its way between the layers and into the cracks of the deeply buried and compacted sediments. I sensed almost intuitively the tortuous heat and pressure that those rocks had endured. The rocks had become so hot that the original shale had metamorphosed and recrystallized into different constituent minerals. The original flat lying layers were now bent and contorted with a marble cake appearance. Most amazingly to me, was that all those rocks were formed in the sea, and were buried and altered deep within the earth, but now they were sitting literally miles above sea level on top of those mountain peaks. I thought of the incredible forces, generated by the moving continents, that pushed up the mountains and lifted those rocks high above the originating seabed. It's almost beyond a person's imagination, yet by sensing those processes, I felt that the spirit of the mountain was somehow blended together with my own.

From the point where I walked back down the trail to my car, those mountains and those rocks have been on my mind. They seem to be calling to me and I am drawn to them. Their imposing nature gives a sense of immovable permanance, but by making the effort to go to them and to learn their secrets, I was helped to understand the long process of change that created them. This knowledge gives me a feeling of spiritualness. Why? Maybe it is because I know that I came from the earth, and at some point I will go back to the earth to rejoin the processes that built those mountains. My life is a brief expression of consciousness so that I can contemplate the mountain, and perhaps the mountain can contemplate me.

I'm back

It has been quite a while since I wrote in this blog. Looking at the date on my last entry, I see that it has been almost two years. A lot has happened since my last posting. Most important of all is that I am graduating this month. My college career took some twists and turns which I hope to write about later. Right now, I just want to explain (partly to myself) why I have been away for so long.

Three reasons come to mind for not posting. First, school got in the way. This is ironic because going back to school is what I wanted to write about. It was shortly after my last post in September 2007 that I became buried in my school work and didn't have the time or the energy to write. A full college class load is demanding. It seems like professors think that their class is the only thing in a student's life. They pile on the work until you feel overwhelmed. That is the nature of college. When I came back to school, I had the romantic notion that I would sit in lofty-minded, classroom discussions. I had forgotten about the importance of studying for exams, and I didn't remember the papers that, if done right, consumed a great deal of time and energy. The practical reality of school rushed in on me. My energy was commandeered and my time was preempted. My journal lost it's priority and was shoved into a forgotten corner. That's where it sat for two years, until now.

My second reason for not writing is that I lost all my creativity. School sometimes does that to a person, which is unfortunate. I separate this reason from number one because this deals with emotions instead of practicality. School beat me down. I ran into bureaucratic issues that seemed stupid and unnecessary. I was a much older student, and none of the clerks knew how to deal with me. I took it too personally. I dealt with my frustrations by putting my head down and bulling my way through classes and red tape. School and classwork became an obsession. Once I discovered that I could get good grades, something that had previously eluded me, I became obsessed. After all, that was why I was here, right? The problem was that I became so focused on my studies that I lost sight of other things, important things, like people. So, anyway, my creativity suffered, because creativity takes a free mind, and obsessions don't allow your mind to be free. I could go on and on about this, but it's time to let it go.

Here is the third reason for not writing. I read once, by some famous writer, that a person should only write what would still be pertinent 50 years from now. In other words, a person who reads your letters 50 years later should still be able to find relevance and meaning. I think that I used this advice as a copout. Or, maybe I found little relevance and meaning in my own life, and therefore I found little to write about. I limited myself unduly. Of course, it would be trivial to write about my day of getting up, going to class, studying into the evening and then going to bed. That is dry, unfeeling repetition...and boring. But, would a future student be able to identify with the anxiousness, and then the determination I felt as I climbed on my bicycle and peddled off to my first chemistry test? Rote actions are trivial. Feelings are a part of the human condition that everyone can identify with. That distinction is where I got off track.

I want to resume my writing. Hopefully I can find that balance of practicality and creativity. We'll see. Stay tuned.