The Mountains

The mountains. The mountains were big. The mountains had snow on them. The mountains were nice to look at. The mountains filled me with awe. The mountains, the tops of them at least, were obscured by clouds. The mountains were visible from my hotel room window. The mountains were gray and white and brown. The mountains looked like a set of sharp bottom teeth. The mountains looked like stalagmites. The mountains were made of granite or iron or some shit. The mountains.

I felt a desire to climb the mountains, but after I thought about it for a while, the desire dissipated. I didn’t want to climb the mountains. I just wanted to look at them. I had a friend who liked to climb mountains, and he wouldn’t stop talking about it. Whenever he would start talking about climbing mountains, my brain would enter a kind of sleep mode, and I’d think about other things while nodding and smiling—taking care not to smile too creepily—and going uh-uh, uh-uh every now and then. He was always buying expensive new mountain-climbing gear and telling me about the new gear in excruciating detail. Wow, I would say, and say, and say.

Sometimes I would take pictures of the mountains with my phone, but after a while I thought, You know, all my pictures of the mountains look basically the same. So I stopped taking pictures of the mountains. Sometimes I would draw pictures of the mountains. Like, dumb little pencil sketches. Mountains are not hard to draw. You just make a bunch of jagged lines. Some people can draw mountains really well, with textures and whatnot, and those people are called artists.

In some parts of the world, people tell stories about strange beasts that live in the mountains, like the Abominable Snowman or… That’s the only one I can think of. But there are no such stories about these mountains, the ones I can see through my hotel room window. At least there aren’t any stories that I’ve heard about. Maybe such stories exist and it’s just that no one has told me, which would not be so hard to believe. Why would someone I don’t even know come up to me and start telling me stories about strange beasts that live in the mountains? That would be insane.

The mountains and the sea. The mountains and the sea. The mountains and the sea.

If I had to choose between the mountains and the sea, I think I would choose the mountains. No, the sea. No, the mountains.

Some people like to ski down mountains, but you can’t just strap on skis and ski down any old mountain. It has to be a special kind of mountain, a mountain that has been designated as a mountain fit for skiing. Otherwise, you might fall into a ravine or sail right off a goddamn cliff.

The science of geology tells us that mountains were formed when—

I’m not even going to try. I don’t want to embarrass myself.

Plate tectonics. Continental drift. Magma.

The mountains are majestic. The mountains make me feel small, and I like to feel small. I like to feel like I don’t matter, because I like facts and the truth and the truth is I am small and don’t matter.

I like facts but sometimes I like make-believe, too. But I like facts more than I like make-believe.

The mountains will be here long after we are gone, but that’s obvious. Most things will be here long after we are gone. That tree. Those tortoises. That big blue mailbox. Most of the children.