trees in a storm
Who am I?
She asked as the mountains wrapped their arms around her and held her tight. She pushed away to find the answer. Stood naked and cold in the wind and rain to find the truth. The mountain was not a mirror, only the rock on which she stood.
This has happened to me before, she said. I am not this mountain. The mountain is surely not me.
Who am I? She asked as she stepped off the Greyhound bus into a city surround by mountains for the very first time, with no more than a suit case in hand.
Who am I? She asked as she lived and learned mountains in no more than a tent? A winter in an old van, grateful for the gift of a down comforter and the warmth of a little dog.
Who am I? She asked as she huddled in another tent, another year, another mountain, with her baby and struggled to put up solid walls with cold fingers and a tired body and soul, before the snow inched down the mountains towards her.
Who am I? She asked as she drove across country with a young child and two dogs, finding a new mountain in a new world of milking cows and feeding horses. She left no comforts behind. There were no comforts yet.
Change is easy if you don’t mind stepping into the unknown. And know how to let go.
Who am I? She asked as she packed up again, now with child, two dogs, two cats… to live in a small room in an odd home with strangers of heart and mind, a new set of horses, duties, and rules she could not live by.
Who am I? She asked as she chose to leave the “comfort” of a job, to step out again into the unknown, which was no longer unknown, with the child, the dogs, the cats…
Who am I? She asks once again as she prepares to step out again.
Leap and the net appears, she was told. And she believed those words. And she leaped. The net always appeared.
Who will I be? She asks now as she prepares to leave another mountain, to shed her bindings and fly free again, to begin anew…
Just you wait and see, she says… just you wait and see…
You are lucky, they say, and she laughs and tells them they could be too if they were willing to leap.
You are crazy, they say then, and she says perhaps they are right.
Don’t you see?
She is not the mountain. But she is the soil that has found its way deep beneath her nails, the sunlight that has creased her skin, the wind that has blown through her hair and watched it turn grey, the air which filled her lungs as she rested her shovel and paused because there was never quite enough up here on this high mountain. She was made by this mountain, by other mountains where she has lived, where she will live. Do not think she is no more than the rock on which she stands today.
She is not this mountain.
I am a mountain unto myself, she said in a deep resounding voice.
The mountain did not hear, did not listen.
You can not leave. They tell her, they told her this before, on other mountains, on other days.
You can not leave. They tell her, as they cling to the mountain and memories they hope will make them who they are. She watches, sadly, as they desperately embrace the mountain, grasping to hold onto the land, as it crumbles and turns to powder in their fingers, and blows away. They stand there with nothing but the indifference of the mountain, and still refuse to let go.
Naked like a newborn child, she stands before a mirror and sees, exposed but real, a mountain of her own.