Mountains live very long lives. They speak slowly. It’s tricky for us temporarily tenuous tidbits to tune in to their tales.
Unless we sit.
This is a really good place to sit down. This twisted tree has shaded many sits, here on this hill, just high enough to peek over the pines in the valley separating me from the hulking storytellers.
Their noses and toeses form spires, the places where the story has been told the most. The drama between them is heard in the choruses of crashing cascades and of frequent furious wind.
This spot affords a view the trail below, a great feature if your food crosses there. Today it’s hikers, though there is a distant rumbling sound that’s suspiciously similar to a purr. Stay tuned to find out if I get eaten.
Sign language must have been a big advantage to families of hunters, since it would give a younger brother means to annoy his elder without spooking the game.
“You’re so quiet, I didn’t see you.” Says the lady, whose husband walked their well behaved dog ahead of her, their matching canes clicking on the red rocks as they descend.
“There was no reason to make noise.”
.
After a snack of dried orange slices and water, the sun told me to move on as the shade betrayed.
Only a few steps higher and I can see other trees, their dusty desert green telling today’s edition of one river’s tale and just where it pushes the valley lower.
A bigger tree frames a view of a broader valley, and inside it, crumbling columns of its former fibers explain its eventual end, as a source of shade. A dusting of finer powder indicates internal insect infestation. This tree, you see, is living in the “dead” part of its lifespan. It has shaded many.
Higher, rounding the corner, a chest-high platform becomes a seat, where yet more neighboring storytellers show steep sides scoured by wind, man, and the other animals. I don’t need rest but there is a shortage of perfect sitting spots and it would be a shame to waste this one.
Confident that it will be here on the way back down, I continue.
This hill should not be hurried.
It turns out it’s a stage and an altar in addition to being a work surface and sitting spot. There’s no sign, but, since I am one, I can tell how humans would use it. It would be a great place for proclaiming things, the tiers of round red platforms putting IMAX to shame, though admittedly with fewer cupholders.
The pareidolia, or the spirits, are strong here. I can see both valleys from the crotch between the spires, the mountain’s exposed rock sloping gently downward in all directions. Here stepped, there smooth.
I went walking among the mouths and mandibles of the speakers. The tongues of the Titans now left with gaping maws. That which was said was said and the evidence slowly slides down the sandy slope. The story takes a healthy toll.
I followed what are mostly game trails to a large rock spit like a watermelon seed from above, covered in tree seed hullls and near matching sandy bumps, stuck to the rock like pearls poured across it, silted in place. The stippled tongue of stories past.
Further, after the requisite sit, I found I had come to the end of my journey. An ancient tree, on top alive, verdant with tiny needles, underneath pointy with larger implements, curved daggers of itself, peeled away in layers by the forces of the mountain, the wind it makes, and the water it furtively guides, made for me a shelter, enclosed in its Schrodinger’s limbs. I sat, but not long. I’m starting to crave my own sustenance, not satisfied with water and Clif bars.
The end of a journey begins a new one.
I decided to try climbing the spire. I got on top of the big head but decided I was too short to be comfortable getting back down, and the consequence of an error would be dire. Meanwhile the red dust kept reminding me that the red rocks are impermanent. The head will speak soon. Its spindly neck supported me, and ten thousand pounds of rock temporarily.
After furthering my attempt to sit under every tree on this mountain I decided to descend.
“If it’s negative and it does not serve you, let it go.” That was said by the man playing the recorder from this same peak earlier. Right now I’m continuing my practice of letting go of places I haven’t been, such as the peak of that spire. I judge the fear as not negative, and I feel it served me and my continued existence as an unmaimed part of the mountain’s story today. Meanwhile there are plenty of places to go, and a restaurant is one of them.
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