we walk.

"My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing."

- Aldous Huxley

And this father does too.

axis mundi.

I've spent a good portion of the last few days shooting video for my place of work, Backcountry Edge.  These clips are basically short duration demonstrations of various tents, backpacks, sleeping bags and other outdoor gear or, as I prefer to think of it, filming these bits is a cross between playtime and learning, for me, and, eventually, for someone trying to get a more multi-dimensional view of a given item than a flat, lifeless product page on a retail website can provide.

It's fun, really, and serves as a nice physical escape from the office which is especially convenient when the weather decides to take a significant turn for the better, as it has this week.

But, this go round, the entire process has made me oddly restless.  Putting up a tent and expounding on its finer points has me wanting to be in that very tent somewhere a bit more exotic than a mile away from my desk.  Blowing up a sleeping pad, I find that I want to spend the entire night on the pad, preferably under a Western sky full of stars, stars, endless stars.  And the sleeping bags, the backpacks, the trekking poles, the you-go-ahead-and-name-its, they've all got me wanting to not just talk about their functional aspects but to put them to good and practical use somewhere far away from an all-too-handy and invasive cell signal.

All of which adds to my current longing for mountains and reminds me of a paragraph from Gretel Ehrlich's Questions of Heaven:

"Are mountains really mountains?  Are mountains a form of enlightenment?  Are rivers a mountain running?  Can we walk through them?  Why do mountains walk through us?"

I don't know the answers and, like all my favorite questions, they may not even have one or, at least, JUST one.  What fun is a question, anyway, if it's too easily answered?  Not as fun as one that isn't, this I know.

Today the mountains are walking through me and yet remain all too distant.  I miss them immensely.   I want to go to them.  To BE with them.  Not to race through them and head home, but to race to them and make them home.

I don't even need the gear.  Gear without the mountains is just trappings.  Mountains without the gear are still the connection points between earth and sky that pull me like so many magnets.

I'll get there...and when I do, I won't be back.

the music and poetry of rock piles.

My mind keeps turning over rock and dirt.  Tumbling and polishing words (though imperfectly) in failed attempts to connect the dots between movement, the call of the (yes, I'm gonna say it) wild and the allure of, if not solitude, then at least remove from the cacophony of the trappings of our modern day.

To eyes grown accustomed to the rows, compartments, parking spaces of civilization, there is madness in the backcountry.  Hithers and thithers fail to make apparent THE way to go...as if there always must be A way to go.  Even the can't-miss-it guide of well worn singletrack must seem a deception to the uninitiated in its determination to round all bends and dance dizzying zigzags when straighter routes seem available.  Not just imagination but also experience is required to see "lines" whether it's trail to be run or rock to be climbed though those most gifted with creativity or blessed with time spent exploring likely take that ability for granted.  I'm guessing, of course, as I'm only moderately creative and woefully short on days and nights beneath the open sky.

But even without those gifts, I sense there is order to the chaos.

To stay on track and keep my short story from growing any longer than need be, I turn to the words of a man who possessed an innate ability to see the natural world as it truly is (was) and who came as close as one ever could to translating its language into our own.  Not only did he have vision, he also spent every possible moment outdoors and worked tirelessly toward preservation.  I shudder to think at how he'd feel about what's been done with all we had.

If I'm not careful, I'll get off track again, and drift back to my searching for words that Mr. John Muir was already kind enough to assemble.

"Every boulder is prepared and measured and put in its place more thoughtfully than are the stones of temples.  If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggling, chaotic dumps, climb to the tip of one of them, tie your mountain shoes firmly over the instep, and with braced nerves run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jump from boulder to boulder with ever increasing speed.  You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of rock piles--a fine lesson, and all nature's wildness will tell the same story."

What do I know?  But that sounds about right to me.