Posted by red on October 6th, 2009 in Nibblets

They loom. Impressive, ancient giants looking down across rivers, gullies and fields below. They humble me with their rigid strength and unyielding severity, their stern gaze down on me as I make my way through life in their shadows.

Their colours are endless – blacks and whites and purples and greens and reds. Slate black rocks crafted by the forges of volcanic artisans long silent, long forgotten. Pillowy soft, virginal white snow intermingled with the clouds that give birth, endlessly, to those pearlescent expanses frosting the cold hard rocks below. Green lushness cascading down their sides, welcoming visitors into an enchanted and wild landscape, inviting anyone that dares journey upwards into its lively embrace. Reds mixed with oranges mixed with yellows as the morning sun rises above to heights barely comprehended from the ground below, before bowing away and letting the evening sun fall back down again, hidden from sight behind the dark giants of the night.

They hold so many secrets, so many past truths about origins, and hinting at the journey ahead as the future marches on. They were once deep in the ocean, thrust forward violently by primeval forces beyond anything the human mind can imagine, and they still crawl upwards, scrambling to reach dizzying heights beyond the sky as they age gracefully and poetically. Their curves, carved out by the relentless and unstoppable journey of water and ice, trickling and crawling down their skin. Wrinkles carved into untouched faces, rivers forming lines that suggest laughter and worry. Pockmarked valleys showing the scars of icey advances, exposing fresh, new earth like new skin in a scarred landscape.

What an honour to feel their presence, what a travesty to never really know their story. It is an unavoidable folly to see them as unchanging despite their constant and undeniable ripening under the cruel whims of an uncaring mother nature. Their struggle is a slilent one, hidden from our eyes as we look to them for as unchanging features decorating the horizon and the limits of human imagination.

The mountains of British Columbia. Tall, proud, and gracefully fragile. So beautiful, so cold, so welcoming and so uncaring.