I like the mountains

I like watching the cloud shadows move across the mountains. I like seeing only mountains for hundreds of miles in all directions. I like the baking sun and the cooling wind, making me cold and hot alternating. I like this rock that I sit on, an exposed bit of mountain skeleton, rough beneath my arms and legs.

I like listening to the birds; towhees, warblers, thrushes, claiming their own small section of the world. I like that I can hear waterfalls, hidden in the valley crevice somewhere before me. I like the ravens riding the air, circling and diving. I like imagining what it would be like to leap from this rock to join them, soaring from one mountain to the next, a scrap of dark dancing in the sky.

I like the blooming rhododendron, their fuchsia flowers beacons of color in the verdant undulations of mountain. I like the flies that look like bees, gently probing the sweat on my arm. I like sitting here, silent, knowing that all is right with the world.

I like how as soon as I step out of my car I feel again that joyful peace of the mountains. I like knowing that whenever I come back all this will be here. The rock and the birds and the flies and the sun and the water and the wind will never leave this place. I like that even when I leave I take the essence of this place with me in my soul.