Mount Olympus, allegedly
(I’ve done some mountain-stalking.)
High* mountains are about awe, challenge, action, effort. They are a show, they fill our mind, rather than the other way. They just leave an odd
ravine here and and odd pass there to fill with our stuff. When you're among them, you can’t slow down
- or you’ll never climb this peak or get out of that valley and you want that, there is urgency around you. Thoughts need to be
steep and high-calorie. Vistas are given, breath-taking and awe-fueling. It's as if the Creator had sneezed and said to us "Now, what do you think?" “Jesus!”, we exclaim to Him, “This is some landscape! Some message!” And then we wonder: "What will it be when it comes in words?"
It is not so with low* mountains. They let our minds spill out. They are there
for us to build up, as if the Creator left a sand-box for us to use our imagination and impress him. But we slow down our trek, lose the sense of direction and purpose
- and fill them with strange visions, disorganised thoughts and outlandish Gypsy
mansions or, in the worst case, God-less cities and towns – the best landscape we can do**.
*Someone, ages ago, called them ‘Slow’ and ‘Fast’, for
reasons – in most likelihood - mythical. However, the name of that sage got lost on the steep and winding road downwards to our present era; one account suggests that it may have been something starting with an A, or thereabouts.
(– just trying to keep up that ancient, heroic idea).
(– just trying to keep up that ancient, heroic idea).
**except Cathedrals
