111. Mount Katahdin

            Another mountain in New England that has captured my imagination is Mount Katahdin in Maine. I had never even heard of it before I went to Maine with my wife in the early 1990’s. We went to Maine just to go see it and then this mountain seemed to loom over us in several parts of the state. It was like Mount Rainier in Washington. You can even see Katahdin on the coast at Acadia National Park. As someone from the Rocky Mountains and the west I always thought that to see mountains from so far away the peaks must surely rise over 10,000 feet, yet from spending time in the Appalachian east, I know that Mount Washington in New Hampshire was the highest peak in New England and that it barely rose above 6,000 feet. Yet there was Katahdin in Maine lording itself over all of that state and it doesn’t quite reach the 5,300 feet mark in elevation.

            It’s a really beautiful mountain at the center of Baxter State Park and we did go to the base of the mountain to see it. There were tons of cars there and people hiking onto the mountain. Like the highest peak in any state, it attracts plenty of climbers. If I had known about it in advance I probably would have set aside enough time to climb it as well but I didn’t know about it and was in no way prepared to climb a mountain that week that we were there. (We were, at the time, more interested in the coast.)

            I do, however, want people out west to know that our fellow countrymen in the east have imposing mountains just like we do out here. Katahdin is every bit as rugged as a peak in the Rockies and even though it may not be able to boast such grandiose elevation as a mountain in the Cascades, it still commands a presence over a large swath of country that is at sea level or slightly above. The immigrants who came to the New World in the 1600’s were not the little wimps who knew nothing about roughing it. New England is a rugged beautiful place that took its toll on early settlers every bit as much as did the vast expanses and rugged mountains of our western frontier. Katahdin is the prime example of that for me. Any smug superiority that I might have had before going to Maine was swept away by Katahdin.

110. Bread Loaf Mountain

            Mountains are things that I love. Some because I have climbed them, others because of their imposing stature, but most because of their presence in my life. I grew up in the mountains and I view them as protective and sheltering. One such mountain is Bread Loaf Mountain in the Green Mountain Range of Vermont. Sometime past I wrote about the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont because that is where I did my graduate studies in English. That school sits at the foot of Bread Loaf Mountain.

            The mountain itself is not very imposing, especially for someone from the mountain ranges of the west, but it is very comforting. It is a long somewhat flat mountain that looks like a large loaf of bread. Who isn’t comforted by the sustenance of bread? And I spent several years in its shadow studying English, its history and its connections to the world. Everyone is comforted by their native tongue so my associations with my own language and that particular mountain in Vermont are indelibly entwined.

            Now I live at the base of a mountain in Idaho that looks very similar to Bread Loaf. It is Moscow Mountain and it is here that I have spent years teaching English to my own students. The connection is uncanny. So it is no surprise that I love Bread Loaf Mountain, a mountain that I have not seen in several years yet I see again every day when I look up at Moscow Mountain right out my back yard. All the alluring comforts of my home, my language, and my people rest at the base of these two mountains that are nearly 3,000 miles apart.

            I have climbed on Bread Loaf Mountain but its importance has differed to me in the sense that the thought of conquering or cresting the mountain has never carried any weight in my mind when it came to that particular mountain. Bread Loaf seems to be a mountain put into my life more to conquer me than the other way around. And its conquest has been of my being, my relationship with the world and others. So while it may not look like Mount Everest it seems to be much larger in calm assuring ways to me.

109. Mount Adams

            Another mountain that has always gained my admiration is Mount Adams, another of the Cascades between Mount Rainier and Mount Hood. It’s in the southern section of Washington’s Cascade Range. While I have never tried to climb Adams, I have spent plenty of time on its slopes picking huckleberries and enjoying the forest.

            Like both Rainier and Hood, Adams is cloaked in snow and glaciers. The thought of climbing it sounds a little more appealing to me, however, because it doesn’t require too much in the way of technical skills. You would probably want cleats and an ice axe to help yourself hold on in places, but there is no need for ropes or anything too technical. That would be manageable for me because I’m averse to the idea of hanging to the side of a mountain by a thread when I am so fearful of heights.

            Mount Adams gets the image of a horse on its side that you can see from the Yakima Valley in the end of summer. The snow gradually melts away to reveal the ground beneath in the shape of a horse. In fact, it looks very much like one of those Celtic horses that the ancients carved into the chalk downs of southern England. The difference is, of course, that Adam’s image is not created by any person and the body of the horse is brown from the earth instead of white from chalk. The white of snow surrounds the image instead.

            I don’t know if I’ll ever actually climb to the summit of Mount Adams, but the idea will continue to intrigue me. I’m getting old enough to realize such a climb is still easily in my grasp but there are still plenty of other things I want to do in the increasingly limited amount of time I have. Still it is one of those mountains that I love and hold onto as a citizen of a country that I love and feel privileged to have such mountains to climb. Mountains like Adams offer the possibility of ascending above the petty distractions that our country seems to use these days to try to divide itself. Great mountains like Adams and the others I’ve mentioned bring me great encouragement in a time when people would lead you to believe hope is fleeting.

108. Mount Rainier

The most glaciated mountain in the contiguous 48 states is Mount Rainier in Washington. It’s a mountain that I see all the time when I go see my family in Washington. It rises 14,411 feet above sea level, so when you are in Seattle that full mountain rise is what you see. The mountain looms over the entire state, so unsurprisingly it is central on the state license plate. Because of its presence it becomes a huge symbol of all things Washington and Pacific Northwest.

It’s not a mountain I have ever tried to climb to the summit, though I have hiked various trails on its slopes. I’m not a technical climber so I haven’t wanted to deal with ropes and ice climbing. The mountain is beautiful and symbolic of so much. It is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. It is an active volcano so it inspires reverent respect, if not fear. Those of us who live in the Northwest know all too well the power of volcanoes since many of us can still vividly remember when Mount Helens blew its top.

But the mountain also represents a sense of beauty and sublimity. All across this country, and probably much of the world, people adore the staining red beauty of the delicious Rainier cherry even when most people don’t associate the cherry with its namesake mountain. And that state license plate? It’s clearly a source of pride that all Washingtonians celebrate from the desert Columbia plains to the rain forest draped Olympics. This is a mountain that never loses its snow. This is a mountain that glows with the midnight brilliance of ice and the burning magma of Vulcan, the classical god of the forge.

Not only is Rainier the uniting force of Washington from east to west, it is also representative of the dividing force of Washington from east to west. It represents that ever present Cascade curtain that divides both Washington and Oregon and makes them classic examples of all the Western States that seem to have such geographical divides.

For me Rainier represents all of those things as well as the vastness and various uniting and dividing forces of this great country of ours.  If the mountain ever underwent a name change my vote would be for Mount E Pluribus Unum. It is, out of the many, one.