THOSE MOUNTAINS THERE BEFORE ME: A MOUNTAIN METAPHOR

 

 

         The roller coaster ride I had been on during the period from about January 1984 to January 1991 was beginning to come to an end. I noticed myself getting more sta­ble, being unwilling to be swayed by my victim parapher­nalia and even more unwilling to be with those people that considered themselves as victims any longer that were still there reaping and sucking all they could from their enroll­ees in their victim stories.

Lone Peak, Wasatch Mountain Range

         January 13, 1991 seemed to be the day that it all began to turn around for me. For the past seven years since the end of my second marriage I had been in and out of several relationships none of which had been benefi­cial for any of us. I was looking for a way to end this trend gracefully, but had not had the courage to do it. But I was noticing more and more that these relationships, for the most part, were dragging me back into that place in time were I had been before 1984 that had not served me well. I was realizing I was filling those same spaces I had been in when my life was not work­ing.

         I knew it would be a hard thing to do, curtailing what seemed on the surface to be a working relationships, but I knew I had to do it. On one side my ego was say­ing, I have this place for you for pleasures yet unfelt. I can bring you peace and I can serve you there. But my other voice was saying more loudly, Hold on, you've been there before. So for a while I stood bal­anced, swaying on top of the fence of life with one logical mind saying, Lean left, while the other encour­aged me to lean to the right. The price, however, of leaning right . . . return­ing to where I had been, was too high. I knew if I went there I would continually behold­ing to those who cry and whine and cast about to enroll everyone in their empti­ness. Luckily my other stronger voice kept saying, Hold on to all you've learned. Escape that awful place. Remember that you were there before.

         This effort, this decision was long in coming until that one day in January when I was looking out the window of my home at the mountains to my left. Nothing ever touches me more deeply than the majesty of those mountains along the easterly side of the Salt Lake Valley. I need only to look at them to feel their power and their beauty and I gain strength from them. Just looking that day reinforced my resolve to do what I needed to do. So I did it and took another look at how those past relation­ships were detrimental to my life and knew that with determination and confi­dence I could change my behaviors.

         While I gazed at those mountains that loomed nearby that morning and every time since that I am near them or can see them at a distance I've compared them with other con­texts of my life; why I’ve been unwilling to be touched more often by these intuitive moments fashioned by the simple things around me. So why was I so seldom born away in the majesty of moments like that? Why was I unwilling to be vulnerable to these inspir­ing edifices around me? It seemed so natural to receive suste­nance from the mountains, the clouds, or the wind. They are so evident by their presence. Some­times they are so apparent, so near to my being, I need only to breathe in their mem­ory (I don't even have to see them or feel them) to be strength­ened by their beauty. Why, then, do I resist in ever greater trials of my life . . . that piece of me refusing to let go, to be able to become my own power when I'm in the presence of Nature? 

         I know there are lessons to be learned from my mountains looming before me almost every living day; remaining, they are as if wait­ing for my call, hardly chang­ing. Those moun­tains are by my side, and there within me too. How shall I see and feel and bear the endless view they cast up? How shall I see and feel their joy? There before me is this specter of a moun­tain, that ageless monolith whose top is covered with snow speaking loudly with noble voice. I hear its voice even when I am far away, while not so grand as when I stand before its feet. But I am always hum­bled by their shadows; their persis­tence and their power over me. The mountains stand even more rigid when it is winter. They hold their place . . . frozen as it were, in defiance against the wind and winter's snows. Then when summer begins the wind and sun blow them free and lets their grasses grow. 

         Why is that all so important to me, I wonder? Where does this leave me knowing the mountain's power over me? Here I am hidden in my man-made show; safe behind my win­ter's cover, strong in surface facades. So safe, in fact, I stand in cooling comfort. But what will come of me, I ask, when the wind blows, and summer comes to share my time? What will come of all whose made-up strength shows up with season's cause, rebellious and stub­born as I am? Will sum­mer come and warm my wint­er's snows? Will my moisture be drawn away to previous cloudless skies? Will I be there when sands drift by?

         In the mountain's solid stone, there is its rebellion. But with grains of sand broken free by spring time thaws and winter's windy days, so is its rebellions crushed. Like me, I see my winter's rebel­lion sculptured at the base until I stand a little less tall . . . this simple, aging man. So by and by we will both be there, me and my mountain, changed somewhat by the windy day and summer's warm breath from whence there is no escape. We are only changed slightly, waiting patiently for winter to come again, so we can remain safe under its frozen mantle. And when one more day passes we'll still seem ageless as one views us from far away, but here close up the timeless truth will be known. In just one more day, time will wear away our slight rebellion a tiny portion at a time and winds will take it far away.

         That night on January 13, 1991 after I had gotten the inspiration to do some­thing about my life, I looked upon my mountain again, now dim­mer in the moonlight, loom­ing there above my head, covered with moving clouds, feathery looking, vaporizing, and then forming in another place; they were shroud­ing the peaks so gently. I realized I'd come to love these mo­ments even when they bring me such distress like I'd seen that day when I examined my rebellions. Despite that I still watch the mountains every day, stable but making minor adjustments by the seasons, maintaining their own world and the lives that depend on them.

         I knew that around me come those same seasons; my summers, my falls, my winters and my springs. They give me the same opportuni­ties as my mountains do. I have to maintain my world and the lives that depend on me with the season's suste­nance. I knew I have to bear the winter's cold and frosty disappoint­ments, but I also know that springtime’s warmth and summer’s breezes will come at last. They come to disturb my personal “moun­tain’s” stillness, silent in their enduring grace. But I marvel and re­joice at their coming.

         On other nights and days like that one back in 1991 when my moun­tain's silence shout at me to listen to its lessons, I learn about life from its beauty and its strength, prevail­ing, showering me and all others who would choose to see these stately scepters standing quietly there. I find myself im­pounding all I see upon my own surface, cold, and enduring that season. It seems new in its grace on me and I was made to be in love with life, so pure in its presence.

         Back in 1991 while the night went on I found myself also shrouded in feathery clouds of memory, im­pressing on me their moisture's gleam. I found peace while I sat there through the night and into the early morning. I slept little. Late the next morning when I woke I found calm in the sun­light's opening scenes. I realized I had come full circle again, to love my life even more. I wanted to bear the cloudless, warm day of winter that much more. I wanted to stand in lonely time and cry for springtime’s coming. I'd had enough of that cold northerly wind and its grip on me. I acknowledged that I had come far with my mountain near my side. I knew it had brought me peace. I shouted into my moment and knew I had many more to come.  And they did come, over and over again through the years.

I remembered that day in 1991 every time I looked at the mountains along the eastern and western sides of the Salt Lake Valley. They continually reminded me of the impact that they had on me and I couldn’t wait to see them in another light or from another perspective. Throughout that year of 1991, I persisted to be captivated by the mountains and continued to deliberate over them from every place I found myself in the Salt Lake Valley. Once this mountain staring had become such an preoccupation for me I found myself seeking other places and other mountains to observe. I went to them and lived with them in the desert, in the eastern part of the state and even took time to view the mountains in the south. And everywhere I went they seemed to give me the same sort of gifts, though each was a little different in scope and ambience.

My fascination with mountains didn’t stop with the mountains of Utah. When I traveled I took special care to go to places where there were new mountains to see. The Cascades of Washington State, the Sierras of California and Oregon, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana became part of my portfolio. When I traveled to Africa I saw the mountains that had been formed by the Rift Valley that extended through Ethiopia, Kenya and into Mozambique—all places I worked in while on volunteer humanitarian fellowships. This all happened during the period 2004 to 2006. In 2007 I traveled to South America to continue my humanitarian work.

In July of 2007 I was on a long-term humanitarian mission in Riobamba Ecuador. This was my fourth assignment I had been on in South America that began with two months in the mountains near La Paz Bolivia. From there I went on to a mountain community called Hauycán near Lima Peru for another two months. Finishing there I traveled to and worked in the high mountain village near Cuenca in Ecuador where I spent another two months, in all these locations I was working with villagers that were considered Indigenous residents of those area (in most cases simple poor villagers that were native to those areas). My last South American assignment landed me in the city of Riobamba, Ecuador where I rented an apartment that became the office for our operations there. From this home base my final mission took me to the highlands above Riobamba where I continued my humanitarian work with the indigenous villagers like before with water projects, gardens, nutritional program, baking ovens, water purification and hygiene programs.

Chimborazo South View

Chimborazo West View

 

At that time (2007) I had never stepped away from or given up on the quest I had set for myself in 1991 which required continuous self-evaluation. Being on these particular South American humanitarian assignments and those I had experiences in Africa in the three  years before going to South America, I simply added another quest to my life that seemed to enhance everything I was doing in these countries. Being in Riobamba was my fifth humanitarian country location that I had been on. Like the time this started for me in 1991, there in Riobamba I realized that I was continuing along a dual quest of life that left me again surrounded by mountains, so large in fact that they surpassed anything I had seen in North America. Once again I found myself enthralled by their beauty and majesty. Just thirty kilometers (18 miles) from where I was living in Riobamba there exists an extinct volcano named Chimborazo that is said to be the highest volcano in the world. The part of the city where I was living at the time had an elevation is over 9400 feet above sea level and this mountain whose peak is over 22,000 feet above sea level still dominated everything in the area when it was visible. However, like Mount Rainier in Washington State in the U.S., this mountain is seldom seen due to the propensity of the sky to be cloudy in this region. In fact it was a great shock to me after I had been there a month that some friends from Cuenca where I was living before Riobamba came over to assist on an expedition we were having there, and one of the first things they asked was had I seen this extinct volcano named Chimborazo. I had heard about the mountain, but I had not yet seen it but I believed it was, in what I pointed to, a southerly direction from where I was living. The second day they were there and were staying with me in the apartment, Jed, one of the Interns from Cuenca went out my front door and looked north, not south, and there was this mountain that I had not seen. It happened to be an exceptionally clear day and suddenly the mountain was in clear view. The three of us, me, Jed and the other intern, Dan ran to the roof of our five-story apartment building where we had a three hundred and sixty degree view of the region. Not only could we see and photograph this gigantic Chimborazo volcano, but about thirty degrees to our right, was another volcano I had not seen either--Tunguragua--the highest active volcano in the world. This volcano had smoke and ash billowing out its west side from activity that happened in 1999. I had learned that because of this new explosion of Tunguragua (the 1999 one) the village at its base had to be evacuated. I was told by one of the residents of this area that in August of 2006 there was some major new activity at this volcano that sent ash toward Riobamba about thirty kilometers to the south that laid a layer of ash over the city that was near one foot deep.

            The three of us stood amazed at the panoramic view from the roof of the apartment and as we continued to look to the east another thirty or so degrees at a third set jagged of peaks that came into view snow-covered and looking like the Teton Mountains in Western Wyoming. These too, I learned later were remnants of eruptions that took place some eons ago.

Like it had been for me in La Paz Bolivia, Lima Peru and Cuenca Ecuador while I worked in the high mountains of these regions, since that day that I first saw Chimborazo and its other ranges surrounding Riobamba, I was again drawn to them and continued to watch for them during any clear days that came on occasion. Like magnets, they drew my attention every time I would leave the apartment and go to another part of the city or make my way up the canyons on the way to the Nucleos (a central village in the Highlands) some forty miles to the west of Riobamba where was working. On clear days along parts of the highway leading to the Nucleos, Chimborazo would occasionally appear giving me another view of its massive cone-like dome. It seemed to me that everywhere I went, especially in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador where I had been doing this humanitarian work, and like at home in the Salt Lake Valley those mountains were always before me—both visually and in my being.

         At the beginning of my quest that began in 1991 I wrote a lot about my experiences and thoughts concerning the way my life was going. Many of which included metaphors I observed or felt about the mountains. In one of these scenarios that I was writing, I included a poem that I entitled, Those Mountains There Before Me. That poem was later included along with several short stories in a book I wrote that I called, Vignettes.

         Over the years since my quests began, I have had many opportunities to visit the mountains I love. I have written many articles and books about them, I have camped in them, I fish in their streams and I’ve worked in these foreign land amongst the natives that make their livelihoods and survive in the mountains. I’ve never really hiked to their precipices, but I’ve stood at their bases and marveled at their beauty. And I have come to believe they are a part of me and I am a part of them. They have been my gift everlasting.