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.