Moving Mountains

And were my faith so strong that it could move mountains, that is the mountain that I would make come to me.

Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa

It is Mt. Kilimanjaro, and it is the last photo I took on my recent trip to Africa, taken out the window of our plane as we began our long trip home on the flight from Zanzibar to Nairobi. We never saw this magnificent mountain from the ground, though we were near it much of the time. It seems to be perpetually shrouded in clouds, so I was delighted to see its summit rise above them, a final gift from Africa.

It is tantalizing, a mountain I once wanted very much to ascend. Kilamanjaro reportedly is not a difficult climb in terms of technical challenges, a long walk to the summit that takes about four days if you are on a tour. But the summit is about 19,000 feet in elevation, and I have known for several years that I would not be able to handle that altitude. Usually altitude sickness settles in when I am at about 10,000 feet, better when I lived in Wyoming. I was younger then too.

I come back to that reality often these days: I was younger then. . . I will likely never leap buildings in a single bound, nor move faster than a speeding bullet. Mostly I am okay with these limitations. But the mountains, yes the mountains. I will have to be satisfied with the photo and the memories. It is my way of moving mountains, of making them come to me when I can no longer go to them.

There are other mountains of course. Some I have climbed, some I have just longed to climb. There is Mt. Rainier, which I viewed from my bedroom window when I was growing up in Tacoma. I have hiked around it, scrambled to the edges of glaciers that slowly move downward from the summit, but I have never climbed it. There is Mt. Olympus in the Olympic Mountains, the highest summit on the peninsula, from which beautiful Blue Glacier descends towards the Hoh River Valley. There is Cloud Peak in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming which I climbed many years ago, a long scramble over boulders the size of SUV’s, also Wind River Peak, Beartooth Mountain, Mt. Baker, Mt. Adams, Mt. St.Helens, Glacier Peak, even the much lower elevation peaks that rise near my home in the inland northwest: Abercrombie Mountain and Bonaparte Peak.

So many mountains must I move and so many memories that accompany them. No wonder life feels heavy to me at times. They remind me of the high points of my life: my daughters, a satisfying career, my marriage to Stan, and of course countless mountain trails where I have made my camp surrounded by mountain peaks.