Unearthed
Crest of Mount Rainier, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington
At 14,411 feet [4392 meters] the crest of Tahoma/Rainier is typically covered in snow year round. But the heat waves this summer have melted most of the snowpack, leaving more rock exposed than I have ever seen on this mountain. I have been sad to see it looking so bereft, but it has also offered a very different view of the mountain, especially when seen up close.
When clad in its usual protective vesture of snow, the mountain seems aloof, maintaining an air of mystery and distance. It asks for deference and awe and is granted that without a thought.
Shorn of that icy impenetrable surface, the layers beneath are fully exposed. The mountain seems approachable, touchable, vulnerable. It permits an intimacy of acquaintance that previously seemed impossible.
And there is a beauty in those revelations, in those bare contours that entice the eye and speak of untold years. One feels there must be a multitude of stories in those lines and folds and shadowed spaces.
I fervently hope that once the snow returns it will remain as it should and I will not see those rocks again. Yet somehow it changes things, when one has seen the long kept secrets a formerly forbidding mountain holds inside. I will always know what I have seen there. I wonder if the mountain knows?
Unearthed
Crest of Mount Rainier, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington
At 14,411 feet [4392 meters] the crest of Tahoma/Rainier is typically covered in snow year round. But the heat waves this summer have melted most of the snowpack, leaving more rock exposed than I have ever seen on this mountain. I have been sad to see it looking so bereft, but it has also offered a very different view of the mountain, especially when seen up close.
When clad in its usual protective vesture of snow, the mountain seems aloof, maintaining an air of mystery and distance. It asks for deference and awe and is granted that without a thought.
Shorn of that icy impenetrable surface, the layers beneath are fully exposed. The mountain seems approachable, touchable, vulnerable. It permits an intimacy of acquaintance that previously seemed impossible.
And there is a beauty in those revelations, in those bare contours that entice the eye and speak of untold years. One feels there must be a multitude of stories in those lines and folds and shadowed spaces.
I fervently hope that once the snow returns it will remain as it should and I will not see those rocks again. Yet somehow it changes things, when one has seen the long kept secrets a formerly forbidding mountain holds inside. I will always know what I have seen there. I wonder if the mountain knows?