high desert

Yeah, I know, I just talk about the same stuff over and over. Tonight I’m thinking about our metaphors for time, for emotions, for circumstances. Last year I visited weather as circumstantial metaphor. Seems we always use topographical and terrain pictures to illustrate circumstances. Mountaintops, plateaus, valleys, wilderness, desert. We’ve always got these nicely stereotyped, romantic pictures of each of these life situations. All cut and dried, boxed up, clearly delineated and defined circumstances.
When you’re up, you’re up, and when you’re down you’re down, and when you’re only half way up, you’re either up or down. “Everyone here is either going through a valley, has just come out of a valley, or is getting ready to go through the valley.”
It’s really not so easily explained though, is it?

There is a magical place in WV called The Dolly Sods Wilderness. Here is a wilderness that has become mostly desert in places due to its own hard times. It was mistreated by the timber industry at the end of the 19th century, and then by the military at the beginning of WWII. What’s left is rocky, tundra-like terrain and areas of sparse vegetation, and yes, the occasional mortar.
This is one of my favorite places to visit. Today, Allison and I drove up and up and up to Dolly Sods. We were on the high Allegheny plateau that is very open. We walked out on some rocks to look off into the muggy, humid air between us and the next ridge, miles away.
From here, at 4,000 feet, there is nothing else higher within sight. Definitely a mountaintop, but in a desert/wilderness context. How does one reconcile this juxtaposition in the neatly defined metaphors of circumstance?
As we walked out on the rocks at the edge of the plateau, it felt as if the area had been deserted even by atmosphere. There was absolutely no movement of any kind and a deafening silence prevailed. I could hear my pulse in my ears. The electrons in the atoms that make up the air (if there was any air) had ceased to orbit the nuclei. Nothing moved. I was sure the earth had stopped cold. There was no theatric/film, mountaintop, hollow wind noise off in the distance to emphasize the loneliness of the desert or altitude. Nothing.
We found some nice flat rocks and I lay down under nothing but sky and listened to nothing. I prayed for movement, for sound. A breeze, a bird. Both the movement and sound finally came in the form of a buzzard awkwardly soaring over the ridge in front of us, and a half-dozen annoying flies buzzing around my ears and landing on my neck and arms.
I continued my begging and endured the flies for some time before I began to feel a slight stirring of the air, and finally, a gentle breeze washed the heat of the sun off my arms and inspired a song from a previously unnoticed bird in the pine trees behind us.

As we drove the miles back down the mountain, I thought of the juxtaposition of mountain and desert. Of course every mountain that reaches above the tree line is desert. I wondered at how one can experience the desert on a mountaintop. I wondered if, in fact, all desert experiences among the wise would be seen as mountaintop experiences. I wondered at what it is that we usually speak of when we refer to the mountaintop. No worries, easy living, wealth? A mountaintop with a chair lift, a stone fireplace and a Starbucks?
Every mountaintop I’ve experienced comes complete with lots of rocks, one-sided buffeted pine trees, and low shrubs. Walking is difficult among the exposed boulders teetering on one another and providing perfect hiding places for timber rattlers. Breathing is difficult in the thin air, and it gets darn cold.
Perhaps this is the only true mountaintop experience. Desert. Nothing seen to do the job of the unseen. Nothing physical to usurp the work of the spirit.
Life doesn’t really follow our romantic pictures and metaphors. What is like to be lonely in paradise? To be deserted on a mountaintop? To find companionship and fellowship in the lush, verdant, richness of the valley?
I think it is sad that we define the mountaintop by circumstances and situations – external influences, rather than what really is, and thus we never really reach the mountaintop which is entirely an internal thing.