Personal essays
The disappearing mountain
Fleeting moments
There’s the famous quote from George Mallory when he was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest.
“Because it’s there,” he supposedly said.
But what if it isn’t?
We got to Japan in time for the peak of the cherry blossom season.
There were beautiful cherry trees in bloom everywhere.
It’s hard to imagine Japan without these stunning pink and white blossoms sprinkled throughout.
And yet, it’s two weeks later and many of the trees have dropped their flowers. One friend told us it is called the cherry blizzard as the blossoms fall off the trees.
It was the same when we visited Yosemite in the early spring a few years in a row.
The famous Yosemite falls roared and called to you to look in wonder.
By the end of the summer, our guide told us, the falls would be a trickle.
But how could something so strong and powerful not be there?
Will it return next year like the cherry trees?
Not out today
Years ago we took a trip with some friends to see Mount Saint Helens.
When we got there we were told that we were lucky. The mountain is only out about a third of the time.
How the heck can that be.
And then two weeks ago Maggie and I took a bus up a mountain in Hakone to see Mount Fuji.
It was raining and cloudy and still the line of buses and cars was backed up for miles as people were determined to make it to this ideal spot to view the mountain.
Maggie and I walked around a bit - it was still a pretty spot - and we took pictures of us pointing to where the mountain should have been.
“Daniel,” you ask, ever so politely, “how could the mountain not be there?”
And of course you are right.
That’s why I like the phrase that we heard at Mount Saint Helens - either the mountain is out or it isn’t.
Where did it go
The cherry blossoms fall from the trees and then are gone at least until next year when we hope conditions will be right for them to come back.
Yosemite Falls dries up as the water that supplies it dries up. We hope that winter rains and snow fall will mean that the falls are replenished next year.
But a mountain - it doesn’t just disappear. And yet it does.
Maggie flew home and I traveled a bit and then checked in to a hotel room in Tachikawa for the try!Swift conference.
I walked onto the balcony and looked out and saw Mount Fuji.
It’s forty-five miles away but there it is. I’m looking at it right now, two days later as I write this.
It looks just like it does in the pictures.
Well that’s just stupid. Of course it does.
I can’t keep my eyes from glancing at it again and again.
Yesterday it wasn’t there.
I mean - it was there but it wasn’t out.
I looked in the same spot where it is today, the same spot where it was two days ago, and nothing.
Mountains that move us
Not everything needs to be a metaphor.
But I was thinking back to the Obama years. Somehow I convinced myself that the country was getting kinder and nicer and that racism was fading.
I didn’t see that racism is a mountain and it just wasn’t out.
It was there. I couldn’t see it.
And now during this second Trump administration I’ve convinced myself that people are awful and that kindness and caring for others has disappeared.
Kindness and caring is also a mountain. It’s just not out every day.
It’s there. The way we bring it back is first, by looking for it.
If I don’t go to my balcony and look for Mount Fuji then I don’t notice the days that it’s out. I forget it’s there. I lose my connection to it. And then, at least for me, it ceases to exist.
I need to rethink my life.
I may be making too much of it but which are the things in my life that are like cherry blossoms and waterfalls - that I need to take time to enjoy because soon they’ll be gone - at least for now.
It’s why I eat strawberries in season. They just don’t taste like strawberries the rest of the year. I enjoy them during those few weeks when they’re - you know - strawberries and I mostly pass the rest of the year.
And then, I ask, which things in my life are mountains? There are big things right there in front of me and some days I see them and some days I don’t.
I need to pay attention to the mountain on days that it’s out and days that it’s not.
Because, it’s there.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 316. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe