Springtime Mountain

The place where I teach yoga from home is my bedroom. Standing on my mat, I look east, and beyond the Douglas Fir who keeps time for the neighborhood, beyond the array of arborvitae and cedar trees in the mid-ground, beyond Rocky Butte, my eyes meet Mount Hood or Wy’east. To be completely accurate, some would likely call this an “obstructed view” of the mountain, though by looking at him* for nearly a decade multiple times a day, this mountain’s influence on my perception means that the obstruction is an essential part of the thing itself.

An obstruction implies that there is separation: a subject and an object. But in my years sitting at the foot of this patient teacher, this mountain, I am beginning to understand that that the obstruction is frequently the path itself and that separation is only a word or a wall created to mask a deep fear that we’ll never be reunited again. I suppose this could sound a lot like an “we’re all one, it’s all good” trope that managed to gain traction with more commercialized and appropriative elements of the yogic paths, but what I’m talking about takes more discipline and far more dedication to the connections between and among ourselves that we can’t yet perceive, or if we can, are still hard to tend because although they move decidedly with life, they move in total opposition to dominant cultural forces of capitalism, colonialism and white supremacy. It takes effort to care as deeply for our fellow earth-dwellers because we are constantly being bombarded with messaging that we are alone in every struggle for survival. Seeing all of the ways that we are helped by others requires attention. Once we begin this work, though, those efforts are rewarded in ways we can’t begin to imagine. The simultaneous joy and grief we experience in moments of recognition are neither separate from each other nor individual.

What is the mountain? The mountain is a thing is a place is a process is a portal. From where I am, this mountain is distinguishable from their surroundings. He appears to stand alone, though he is completely a part of this planet, just like me, just like us. In that sense, we and the mountain are together on this planet.

When we lived in Colorado and climbed many 14’ers, I discovered vertigo in myself while scrambling to the top of Sawtooth Mountain. My astigmatic vision processed the vastness of the long view down its western face and up the side of the adjacent mountain as a pulsating confusion of proximity and distance. My mind was not afraid of falling, but my eyes were convinced I was already falling, already had fallen, was never not falling. Rereading Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums a few weeks ago, I took great refuge in his revelation upon fearfully attempting to summit California’s Matterhorn Peak, “You can’t fall off a mountain.” It’s all mountain. You are the mountain.

This mountain is covered in foliage. In summer, grasses grow and wildflowers flourish across wide meadows. In winter, snow and ice cover this mountain. Throughout, they are covered with an abundance of trees. Houses, structures, ski lifts, roads also inhabit this mountain. People and other animals, insects are there; some coming and going, and others remaining there entire lives. When the snow comes, Mount Hood is still the mountain, and when it melts, the mountain remains. When other living beings walk, drive, sleep or laugh upon that mountain, they too, are the mountain. Ephemeral breezes that blow from somewhere, coalescing for a moment around this peak before carrying on, also are the mountain. All of the elements that touch them become part of them, however transient in span. The parts of myself that have been created, transformed and no longer exist in the ways they once did are still a part of me, though my relationship to my own growth and composting continues on, and evolves as well. The mountain took eons to arrive, being gentle with our own process is also a boon.

This mountain is also a volcano, dormant for around one hundred and fifty years now. My experience of active volcanoes has been utter devotion to possibility where impossibility appears certain. To watch new land being birthed by Kilahuea erupting, creating land mass where there was none before, is nothing short of breath-taking. We don’t even know what is possible, but frequently we move through life as if every box has already been checked. The mountain reminds us that the miracle of existence and the unknown are with us in every sunrise and every step.

From my window, the melting snow is part of the mountain and a part of me through the miracle of observing the slow shift in his color from ultra-bright white to creamy grey to graphite flecked with the memory of winter. He and I could never be separate. And that remembering of connection has become the very core, spiraling infinitely both inward and outward, of my vision and orientation. We are not separate. We are gazing at the same stars, co-breathing breath with the plants and the trees and each other, blooming and melting together.

Swami Vivekananda distills the teachings of Isha Upanishad so beautifully; “There is one Self, not many.  That one Self shines in various forms. Man is man’s brother because we are all one. A man is not only my brother, say the Vedas, he is myself. Hurting any part of the universe, I only hurt myself” (Vivekananda, Complete Works). This is also what the mountain is teaching me.

*I’m experimenting with ways of referring to our non-human co-habitants of this planet. I’m using “him” as a way of elevating Mount Hood to subject status, rather than objectifying them further. Among the people who are indigenous to this area, Wy’east is one of the “brother” mountains, along with Klickitat (Mount Adams). Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about this in Braiding Sweetgrass and offers “ki” and “kin” as alternatives to “it”.