After Ourselves

April 30 2013

I know I will give it a name

as hard as I resist.

Something sentimental, honorific

or simply descriptive.

Except 
it’s never the same

imperceptibly shifting, day-to-day,

the light, different

the thickness of air.

Which is strange, because it’s always been there,

unchanged, for eons.

Will always loom over my life,

a massive brooding presence

keeping its distance

receding as quickly

no matter how hard I walk.

Its majestic indifference

keeping me small,

interceding

between me, and the sky.  

I am not mystical, or religious.

I understand

plate tectonics, inanimate rock.

But the lush green forest

wrapped around its shoulders

like a densely woven shawl,

the ragged clouds, streaming off

its white luminous crown

hold me in awe.

Intrude on my dreams

like an igneous wall

between me, and the sun.

Like a lover who spurned me

more than once.

Mere naming

will not tame this mountain.

But we cannot resist

naming the world,

in our own image

after ourselves.

Reducing nature

to strict taxonomy,

navigating creation

by azimuth, and degree.  

The laughable conceit

that man has dominion.

That I could conquer its peak,

even if I hauled myself up

by the skin of my teeth,

scratched my way

to the very top.

Before the mountain

in its infinite whimsy

flicked me off.

Ian Brown is a fine feature writer for the Globe and Mail. I often find myself envying his turn of phrase, his poetic sensibility. He’s on a sabbatical at Banff, occasionally contributing articles to the paper. This weekend, he wrote about the ineffable allure of mountains, their paradox and attraction.

Shortly after reading that, I heard an item on NPR about some fractious goings-on at the base camp of Mt. Everest. I thought about the purity and idealism of the authentic mountaineers – who respect the mountains they ascend, and understand it’s not at all about conquest or altitude or numbers of ascents – and the corruption of this laudable ideal by commercialism and instant gratification.

I suspected I’m more attracted to the wide open spaces and big sky of the prairies than I am to a mountainous landscape – which has an almost claustrophobic effect on me. And, of course, I prefer my own boreal forest. But I cannot deny the powerful mystique of mountains:  how they endure, recede, imperceptibly shift; and most of all, their majestic indifference to our petty conceits.