In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds – Robert Green Ingersoll

This piece began as a dream. As a little girl, I had a reoccurring dream that I lived on top of a mountain and went on an endless list of mischievous adventures. As I grew older the dream began to fade, yet the young girl turned mountaineer stuck with me. I always think of those dreams whenever I find myself reluctant to embark on new journies or seize new opportunities – she fills my mind with her courage and brevity – if she can do it, so can I. This is a story derived from that very fantasy, it is about a girl from the mountains who finds herself lost and away from the comfort of her home. Soon she meets a boy and together they embark on a  journey to return her to the snowy peaks she calls home. This piece is about coming to understand that home is not always a place or familiar rooms, sometimes, home has two hands and a heartbeat. 

   I am from the mountains. I was born on the snow covered peaks, so high above the ground that when you look down there is nothing but clouds. The tops of mountains are places of purgatory between the earth and the heavens, neither here nor there. It is always cold, even though the snow-covered peaks are the first things to greet the sun’s warmth; the snow is the only thing that sticks, not the rain or the rays, or the people.  This is not a place for the faint of heart or the homesick – the tops of mountains, although beautiful, are one of the world’s most desolate places. It’s as if the earth itself before it had been populated with life, was just a vagabond orbiting the solar system. Alone and yearning for purpose, the earth reached out to the sky like a hand in search of another, begging the universe to grant it with purpose. These outstretched arms of sedimentary flesh were immortalized in the form of mountains, forever reaching to the heavens and asking for intimacy. This is where I lived.

  It was here on the peaks above the clouds, isolated like an island in the middle of the sea, that I skirted along the sheer, rocky cliffs, and with every step, I took the earth crumbled away beneath my feet. I was made to live on a mountain and my soul was fashioned by the alpine skyline and bound to the jagged, rocky slopes. I lived in the most thrilling uncharted territory, my veins flushed with adrenaline and my head was always full of mischievous ideas, all of this and yet I was riddled with loneliness. My heart assured me that I was content but my mind hindered me from forgetting that in all of my happiness, I had no one but the stars to share it with.

   One day, after the fresh snow had blanketed the mountainside and the earth shook and the shale leaped and danced along with the trembling ground, so vehement that my bones vibrated inside of my skin, my feet tingling until they numbed completely – one day, there was an avalanche. As an avalanche sweeps down the mountainside, it consumes the trees like a wave on a beach, they disappear beneath the roaring tidal of earth and snow that carves away the side of the hill. I watched the avalanche, I felt the avalanche, and my head told me to throw myself in front of its wake so that it could bring me down the mountain, but my heart begged me to stay with my feet planted on safe, high, ground. Before my head or heart could decide my course of action, my feet slipped away from the solid mountain side and the monochromatic sky was lost behind the white out of the avalanche’s wave.

***

   I awoke to a world of color. No longer on the rocky preface that I had become accustomed to, I found myself in awe of the solid ground beneath my feet, so different than the loose shale that covered the mountain tops. Away from the mountain, the earth was soft and covered in life. Grass and moss and trees and flowers grew everywhere, and the air was so soft, unlike the cold, brisk, air that lingers at the peaks. I looked around at the brilliant hues and felt the need to rub my eyes – I had never known anything outside of the mountain’s grey scale, let alone that this vibrant sanctuary lay just below it.

   I wandered the unfamiliar terrain expecting to feel connected to the land and its people, but I had yet to meet one. Lost in the dense, evergreen, forest I saw the sun slip below the trees and soon it was dark. I had known darkness. I had known loneliness and fear, but somehow these feelings were amplified by my disorientation – my alienation. I slept on the soft, green, grass that I had first come to love, only now, as the dew froze and hardened to my cheeks I became irritated. I yearned for my snow-covered bed and the howling of the wolves to lull me to sleep.

***

   I opened my eyes into yours – curious but not startled by your presence. I asked you who you were and where you were from (although it was obvious you were from this place of life and color, your eyes so jubilant they told me the answers without the need for words). You asked me what had happened and I told you the story of how I had fallen off my mountain, how it had tossed me from its peaks into the raging avalanche that swept me away from the only home I had ever known. I told you how I was unsure of this exuberant place, how I had first loved its aura and its pallet of colors, only now all I wanted was to return to my home above the clouds. You listened so intently and when I spoke of where I had come from, your eyes danced and your face lifted and you told me how you knew how I could get home. I’m not sure what I loved more: the idea of seeing home again or the thought that I wouldn’t have to go back alone.

   Together we made our way back up the mountain. Days passed. We wandered, sometimes in circles, but you always exuded total calmness. I thought that maybe, you did it on purpose, but every time this thought arose in my mind I squashed it before it could grow into anything that resembled hope. As we traveled, you in the lead, I listened to your stories and laughed at things that weren’t even jokes – your entire personality left me elated. Sometimes you would hum, sometimes soft and peaceful, sometimes lively and joyful, always making my heart jump and my mind sink when I began to imagine what my life back on top of the mountain would be like without you.   At night we built fires to fight the cold and together we huddled to preserve the heat. I resented my eyelids for growing heavy and my lungs for yawning, all I wanted was to stay awake and savor our dwindling time together.

I’m from the mountains and from them I fell, and as I came to understand life away from the cold, desolate peaks, I began to create a home in the hazel of your eyes and the steady rhythm of your beating heart.