My Mountain

Along I-90 towards Seattle, I drove in anticipation of my first glimpse of, what I would call later MY Mountain, Mt. Rainier. My roommate, with me on this trip, had made the trip from Spokane to Seattle many times before; she had prepared me, the best she could, for the sight I was about to behold. Just as my introduction to the ocean, no words could truly prepare me for such a reality-shifting sight. As we topped the final hill, still miles away from Seattle, she said, “there it is.”

As I strained to adjust to the vast openness, for a brief, but long, second, I thought, “there WHAT is?” As my eyes scanned the horizon, I could see only clouds, shapes, sky, blue….and then! And then, as my brain processed the vast amount of information my eyes were sending, I. Suddenly. Saw. Those clouds, and shapes, and blues, and sky, slowly pieced together, and I discovered that those clouds, shapes, blues, and sky were, in fact, an enormous mountain, quite literally beyond my belief. I was silent. Only silent.

Having grown up in the south, and only being exposed to the Smoky Mountains that rest on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina, my mind and senses were simply unprepared for the possibility of a mountain of this magnitude. What rose before me was outside the scope of my vision. Although it was as real and visible as anything could be, it was “hidden” from me for those first few seconds, because it was totally and utterly outside the realm of possibility for me. My brain had never had to process information of this nature, so therefore, I simply couldn’t “see” it.

I love mountains. Just like oceans, I love how small they make me feel in the scheme of this life. I have never forgotten the feeling of the above experience. As my eyes adjusted to the majesty of that mountain, my reality changed. Within the first two seconds, I was convinced there was no mountain there; in the next two seconds I was equally convinced of the mountain’s presence. Were I able to slow down time, I would have voiced these doubts. My mind was puzzled. By her statement, my roommate could obviously see the mountain, but why couldn’t I? Or had she gone crazy and there was truly no mountain visible? As the shift in my reality happened, I, too, saw a most magnificent sight. A sight that has stayed with me all these years.

In many ways, my life has replicated this experience. I have lived a happy life, even in the midst of church, religion and god, my life was full of nice sceneries such as the clouds, sky, and blue above. On a scale of 1 to 10, I believe I would have ranked myself a 9 in the happiness scale. It is only when this scale began to shift did a new realm of happiness and contentment become a possibility. A new reality opened up to me. Now I feel my happiness and contentment far exceed any scale I could fathom.

Just as I find it hard to describe my Mt. Rainier experience, I find it difficult to wrap words around the paradigm shift that has occurred over the last twelve years of my life. My brain has been busy processing the new information being sent by my soul, and just as the awe sunk in as my eyes focused upon my Mountain, the daily wonder of my life brings about a new level of gratitude and speechless amazement; I once again feel small.