“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place ? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.” ~ Rene Daumal
As soon as I stepped out of the van I knew I wasn’t dressed properly for the weather. So much for WLEE (wilderness leadership) kids always being prepared. The area surrounding us was a dark, evergreen enchanted forest - like something out of a Lord of the Rings film. As I moved up the trail, the terrain and plant life began to change drastically. The quiet and dark alpine forest quickly shifted into a yellow and blue canvas of windblown grasses meeting the clear blue sky.
The further from the road I hiked, the stronger the wind pulled at my hair and bit through my clothes to my skin. As I hiked, déjavu crept in as if I had been here before at this exact place at a different time, and as someone else. The closer to the summit I hiked, the clearer the déjavu turned to memory. Three years ago in the Virginia Highlands, I hiked across a bald almost exactly like this one - but I was Chickadee then.
“When the wind calls, you know, that somewhere in the mountains, it has found the answers that you were looking for.” (Vikram Oberoi)
The sound of the wind blowing through the mountains was like that moment when your favorite song from years ago comes on the radio and you had forgotten how much the song moved you and all at once that feeling comes back and you just sit in the moment and let the music flow through you.
I began to scan the horizon and noticed all the peaks I could identify from this vantage point - saying their names in my head as I recognized them was as if realizing you are in a room full of people you know when you are expecting to be meeting strangers. Maybe nature is always that way. When you take the time and put in the effort to know and learn the names of creatures and trees and places, every time you step outside you walk among friends.
The bald up here was created by man - two hundred years ago in this very spot there would have been a thriving biosphere of alpine trees and mosses and plants. Now, only the backbone of the mountain remains with a thin soil that only pale grasses can survive.
You can almost feel the very soul of the mountain as you stand here among the grasses and the silence and, in your mind’s eye, see the transformation this place has gone through over the years as her forests were stripped and dragged down the mountain to build structures of industry and progress and slowly her majesty began to fade as she aged and grew weaker. Then one day she woke up.
Her spirit began to shine from beneath the dirt as it was washed away and her skeleton of granite, quartz, and mica began to shine like a beacon of hope - hope that tells that the mountains will live on long after man has risen and fallen and left this earth. So from the ashes, she rose and became the wild and raw beauty where I stand today.
I will never stand in the presence of the mountains and be so ignorant as to believe this earth was created for me and for humans. We are such a small part of this existence and yet we believe we hold the power over it and that it is our right to destroy what we will. We take and take and take and believe the earth will continue to meet our every want and need - when in reality, we are destroying our very own means to existence.
The earth will always bounce back because that is her nature and that is what she has always done for billions of years. Humans have existed for mere minutes of her lifetime - to believe we are what matters most is to be destroyed. This place where I stand now is tangible proof that we must learn to live in peace with the planet.
This area has been protected as a wilderness area yet bears the deep scars of high traffic from tourists and view seekers. As long as we believe that protecting human life is separate from protecting our planet’s life, we will remain doomed and ready for extinction. But just as the mountain can rise from the ashes of pain and despair- so can man.
“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” (Sir Edmund Hillary)
