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The Mountain View

By Ken Wright

"Most people are on the world, not in it. "

- John Muir

The view from my home town is sweet. No doubt about it.

From my yard, the sun rises behind a long earthy arm, hairy with pinion and juniper and ponderosa, stretched toward town. And it sets behind a sweeping range of bluffs and mountains bulging from across the town's river. Upstream of town, a broad, verdant, redrock-lined valley is gouged from forest foothills spilling away from the nearby crags and peaks of the San Juan Mountains. From town, the river drains onto the leading edge of the desert Southwest, marked by crumbling swells of sandstone waves rising onto the shore of the mountains.

Every morning this view grabs and and slaps me awake. Every day it flirts with me, distracting me, drawing my gaze, demanding my attention. Every night I feel it, out there, everywhere, unseen even as its presence permeates my home, my living room, my bedroom.

Pretty sweet. And it's that view the brought me to the mountains, and has kept me eddied out, a hostage of choice, here and in other Colorado mountain towns for more than half my life.

But that's not the only view from this, and those many other, mountain towns.

There is also the view as in viewpoint. See, that mountain country out there, encircling and encasing us, shapes how we see things, our perspective on the world, and our place in it. As mountain people, we tend to be a bit independent, somewhat free-thinking, leaning toward self-reliance in things. Traits that serve one well in rugged country.

But we also know from the long history of people who have tackled lives in and on this varied and hard landscape, that you can't make it alone. I'm not sure it takes a village (at least the Mountain Village I know doesn't cut it), but in my experience and experiments at carving a life in the mountains, it has taken housemates, co-workers, barrooms, a neighborhood, an alley, a town, a community, and an endless stream of friends, lovers, companions, acquaintances, and temporary strangers.

And there is the view that is a way of seeing. One thing that jumps out at anyone who comes to our mountains is how far you can see. Over valleys. Up mountainsides. Between the serrations of distant peaks to even more - ever more - distant peaks. And if you look at those views long enough, they start falling into place. The landscape becomes a text, and scenic features, like words and punctuation, begin to make sense. And tell stories. Geologic stories. Climatological stories. Biological stories. Historic stories. Breaking stories. Potential stories.

And as we learn the language and wander the storylines rising like braille from the land all around us, our personal stories get written in as well. And that is the literacy we use make sense of the world - any world we find ourselves in.

And then there is the view that guides vision. When we look out over the mountains, people around here don't just think "pretty," they think, Go!. Mountain people are wont to explore, venture, see and touch and do for themselves. Being greeted every day by those mountains rippling off into the distance does that to you. You hear them calling.

And so we take that feeling, that drawing outward, that insatiable curiousity of what things are like over there, anywhere, everywhere, with us. Into our adventures. And our jobs. And our duties and obligations and projects. Into our families and friendships. Into the future.

And then, when we seek a healthy respite from those worldly views, we return to that other view. The one from just about anywhere here. The one out over the mountains and valleys and rivers and forests and snowfields that frame all our views.

And it's pretty sweet.

Ken Wright's is the author of The Monkey Wrench Dad and Why I'm Against It All. Learn more at monkeywrenchdad.com.