A December Love Story

Mountains, las montañas, 山, in all the languages I know and hope to, with the longing of a mortal to understand something older than anything we know.

They were the first thing I noticed when the plane landed. My seatmate was asleep when we began to descend, and had shut the plane window, wasting his luck, as if dropping thousands of feet in the air was as routine an event as any. 

(My own words now remind me now of Janet—the time she asked what I had bought at the grocery store, and I had muttered, “just fruit.” “Just fruit?” she had repeated, “Just? Isn’t it amazing that we can walk into a grocery store and have our own Garden of Eden?” I hope that she is still as amazed by life as when I met her.)

I peered across the aisle to try to catch glimpses from the open window on the far side. When the plane tilted, the mountains disappeared from view, the small window revealing only bare sky. 

I was staying with a couple—Audrey and Brian—and their two sons. When Audrey picked me up, I was already sweating in jeans, while she was wearing a jacket. Upon arriving at the farm, she showed me the ladder to my loft, and I scampered up to the half-octagon shaped room with a blurry distinction between walls and ceiling, not quite enough room to stand up at its highest point, even at my low stature. 

At the back was a small window, as if perfectly framing the nearby mountains. I took a moment—several moments—to stare. They were close this time, tantalizingly close, in a way that made me overcome with a desire to walk outside and go towards them, and up and on them. 

Nothing made me hate private property more than learning that there was a ranch separating the farm from the mountains. Though Brian soon told me that you could walk across it and the owners wouldn’t care—just go with someone so you don’t get lost. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to get lost, he said.

Almost every day after work, a short work day, working on the farm for food and a roof rather than a wage, I walked. I walked on the highway, but it was the type of highway where you could walk for ten minutes before a car drove by, a novelty as someone who had only lived in the crowded Northeast. I walked to take in the new landscape, the unfamiliar flora, some of which I later learned the names of—soapweed yucca, mesquite. Even the sand and pebbles seemed foreign to me. And I walked because there wasn’t much else to do.

One day, a pickup truck stopped for me. An older woman with silver braids and sun-weathered skin asked if I needed a ride. She said she was going into town. I’m okay, I said, I’m just going for a walk.

Another day, I came upon a road on the left side of the highway, marked with a sign that said primitive road, drive at your own risk. On the dry sandy road that looked like every other desert road underneath the high-pressure gas lines, everything in the distance looked so close like if I just walked a little further, I could get to the end of the road, could get to the mountains. I became filled with a kind of excitement and longing as I got closer, knowing I’d have to turn back soon to make it back in time before sunset, before evening chores, this was an unbearable fact, as I had already walked all this way, to get so close. Just five more minutes, I kept telling myself. As the features of the mountains revealed themselves in even more detail, as if the level of granularity had shifted with a single step I took, and I could see what looked like a little canyon, I was happy in that moment to just be alive. When I turned around, still peeking back behind me, as if saying goodbye to an old friend. Everything competing for my attention. The mountains on the other side of the highway, with dark spots where the clouds cast a shadow over them. The pebbles encrusted in ridges of sand as if I were in a beach town, listening to one of her playlists and I started to feel like she was all around me, in the plants and pebbles. 

12/7

Saturday came, meaning I would have a full day to myself instead of a mere afternoon. I set out with what I thought was enough time to walk over an hour on the highway and road, up the mountain, and then back. I brought a few bottles of water, a bag containing almonds and a chunk of bread.

Where one mountain ends and another begins—if I were a giant, I would lay my back against one and prop my feet up on the other and stretch out. Desert wilderness, without a soul in sight. I made it to the mountain, though not all the way up it. I ran out of time; I should have left earlier. The hardest part is walking away. Your thoughts at this point take on a dream-like quality, filled with either immense clarity or delusion. You think about people far away with whom you have no future, only seeds of hope that you still tend to sometimes. The thrill of hopping a barbed wire fence. The black cows that eye you suspiciously, a Steely Dan song. The moment the mountain comes into focus and you can see not only the contours but individual rocks and trees. How it turns slightly greener from the far away tan. How you can see the part of maybe not a trail, but a slide of rocks. If you were here with me with your car I’d make you drive me here all the time. If you were with me, I probably wouldn’t be here at all. 

12/14

I went back to that mountain. I had downloaded podcasts and audiobooks for the walk there, but ended up listening to nothing. I didn’t make it all the way up before I began to worry about getting back before dark—another failed attempt, why hadn’t I left earlier?—but I knew that when I went back to my loft that night, I could look out the window and know I had been there. 

12/21

On the shortest day of the year, I set out to hike Craig’s Crag, or the tallest mountain visible from the highway, as I’d previously known it by. Three water bottles, a baseball cap, a jacket, a headlamp in case things went terribly wrong. A single empty sheet of paper torn out from my journal, and a pen, in case of any epiphanies. A plastic bag with two leftover sourdough pancakes and soy sauce lemon tofu, a combination that no one was around to call disgusting. I cut across the ranch this time, instead of going all the way to the highway, now that I was familiar with the terrain, on my last day. Walking from the farm straight towards the mountains—the thing I had wanted to do most as soon since I had been here. In the week leading up, I had scorned the mountains for their deceptive distance, myself for all my failed efforts. But I made it this time. As I had been told, when you get to the top, all these taller peaks appear behind you, and it suddenly looks tiny in comparison. Mountains on top of mountains. It’s amazing what distance can disguise, the dimensions that unfurl when you’re up close. 

I almost walked back the long way because I wanted to see the highway one last time. I get attached to places quite easily, I think. I am reminded of the dwindling days, that the year is almost over. It has been quite a year, from unexpected romance and heartache, to half a year of building trails, a semester off, to the desert. I think about the top of Craig’s Crag, the hidden peaks behind peaks. How to be content with leaving having left so many unclimbed. Even among the peaks, you can spend your whole life chasing taller and taller mountains.