I’ve lived most of my life tucked into the
western slope of the Rocky Mountains. To me there is no greater comfort than
that very mountain range. I have always had this strange, sometimes irrational,
fear of exposure on the open plains. I can see myself being the victim of large
birds swooping down and carrying me away. But the mountains offer protection
and shelter from all of those fears. Of course the mountains create their own
fears, but all of those I have not often considered.
I’ve
written frequently of my love for the rivers of this country, especially my own
Salmon River. The Rocky Mountains are the source of so many of these rivers.
Their peaks rise up on the western side of the North American continent and
spread from the northern to southern tip. They gather the mists of the Pacific
Ocean in frozen crystals at their great height and preserve them in glaciers
and snow banks that gradually melt into those life giving streams that flow in
raging torrents and gentle streams back to that very ocean from whence they
first came or east to the Gulf of Mexico where they warm and swell into the
mighty and devastating hurricanes we have all come to fear.
This
majestic mountain range encapsulates the beauty of our planetary home. We sing
of them and dream of them in our songs. Without them there would never have
been a Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer or even me singing my own river songs.
Those of us Americans of the west (and Canadians and Mexicans as well) owe so
much of our existence to this great range of mountains that it would be foolish
not to be thankful for them with all their peaks and valleys and their spine of
our continent, their rivers and barren deserts. All of it gives me a great
sense of wonder and majesty that can only be summed up in a Rocky Mountain
high.
No comments:
Post a Comment