The day mountains moved me

So with an I-tumbled-out-of-bed-ten-minutes-ago Alex running down the road, car kitted out for an apocalypse by mumma Bailey (you can't be too careful when The Shining was filmed predominantly in Timberline Lodge), Erika and skis tucked in, road trip tunes on tap, we were off. I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day.

I apologize in advance for the poetic overindulgence in this post. I have been falling for the Oregon mountains since that first jet-lagged tinged encounter as my plane entered PDX way back in August (a lifetime ago), and figured, when better a time to write about how they stole my breath than snuggled up with one. An open fire in Timberline lodge. Hands cupped around a steaming mug of fancy hot chocolate. Sun shot periwinkle air. Beautiful Bailey to my left. The summit of mount hood hugging the window pane on my right. My cheeks sore from the cheesy grin plastered all over my body the second we turned the corner of the road and there she was was, aching inside my eyes. With wisps of mountain breath clinging to the trees, the Narnian landscape rolling out under our wheels, The Black Keys blaring, camera emphatic, I felt my toes take root as she blew me away.

There's a reason I only take stills. 

These were also in fact NOT the mountains we went up. 
(Mount Hood is hiding behind those trees on the left)

But these are some hip transfer kids I know (to quote Erika)

ooh blue skies

my fantastic filming skillz mean that just as the summit comes into view, I stop.

When Mum asked me over Christmas if I missed anything about America, my immediate response was 'The mountains' - in London there was a definite absence of that higher horizon line which peppers the landscape as I trundle down to 7/11 or back from a coffee house on Woodstock. I don't understand why they move me so much, mountains. I remember being consumed on both sides of the Yangtze Gorge that summer in China, where ranges equally ate my words. And that flight down to San Francisco through the reigning glory of peak after peak after peak. But Mt. Hood is different. Being on her. Alpine beauty tossed with a white so white, it's a delicate violet. The warp and weft of cascading oceans of fir slowly inhaling and exhaling down the gentle slopes of her back. Its Christmas everyday. And Narnia on weekends.

 

This is the sort of day I'll never shake.
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