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The Mountain

“Fro, that haunt Helicon’s great and holy mountain, and dance on their soft feet round the violet-dark spring…”

—Hesiod, “Theogony”

Thebut itself It does not speak It has no reat s to it: a getaway, quiet er It is all these things or none of them, and the traveler sees whichever he looks for in it For hto return with the answer to a question

Six days a week, fro bus on the winding roads at the base of Mount Rainier in Washington People often asked hiot tired of the view He never did The h to provide endless material for wonder and conte peak, the way it changed with the seasons and the weather, the sense of danger and foreboding that caen was thin and adventurers risked life and limb for the chance to say they reached the summit

“Magnificent in its symbiosis” Those were the words Paul usually used on his tours to describe Rainier Up on the s fall and they turn into ae up there that grows in a wispy hanging vine It so it To Paul, it was evidence of the hand of God

The philosopher Edmund Burke described two different responses to natural beauty in his treatise On the Subliinated in love, the other in fear Fields full of flowers, ave people a sense of harmony and security They were pretty, but they were not sublime To be sublime, a landscape had to evoke not only beauty but terror—a sense of so that we can scarcely conificant in comparison

Mount Rainier was subliant man would have to be humbled in its presence It reer than we are, that there are still places that we cannot blast, or sell, or pave, or control Is it any wonder that Jesus, ent up to the e that “the meek shall inherit the earth” and delivered the sermon “on the mount”?

Paul enjoyed his job There was no gossip, no politics, no deadlines or performance reviews He found both solitude and company on the side of the mountain The tourists who filed onto his bus each day were always in a good ruroups bonded quickly over their shared te photos of nature After a pleasant day together, they parted ithout any messy breakups or accusations

People take vacation snaps in a futile attempt to capture the mountain and the moment so they can take them ho in our DNA that ive us the pleasing illusion that we can Yet the ie never quite evokes the experience… “The picture doesn’t do it justice You had to be there”

People also take photographs so they will not feel lonely They take them for the absent friends they ere there to share the view There are few thingsout on a truly subli it all alone This was so Paul knew quite well

The ritual of being a tour guide appealed to hiular experience was for Paul a repeating experience Each day he would unlock the bus, jot notes in a couple of logs, and fill the gas tank At 10:00 am, the visitors started to file in with their passes and take their seats Soht for the back The ones who liked to ask questions sat near the front In the hbors during the ride

Paul rounded a fahs and murmurs as the tourists saw a spectacular view for the first time He had developed an act of sorts over the course of two years He knehat guests always asked, and he told them before they had the chance He knehat jokes and lines ht-provoking observations too And if that wasn’t the group’s mood, he could ply the a T-shirt to the winner At the end of the day his pocket was always stuffed with more than his share of tips He would never become rich on hishe needed—regular aze at the mountain and reflect on life

Throughout his tours, Paul liked toout on his old job Inevitably, toward the end of the tour, someone would ask what his old job had been He loved their reactions when he said, “A minister”

“Special Friend”

“I summited Mount Rainier” Words are inadequate to the experience All of the preparation, every single step, the tio on, the cold, the thin air—all that it means to accomplish that feat—it’s lost to everyone but the individual who undertakes the journey

Of all of the parts of his job as a minister, Paul liked funerals the ht word No one “likes” having to perform a funeral Yet ever since his wife, Sara, died, Paul found funerals, and only funerals, truly satisfying Though he was an introvert by nature, he had always been a co rasped when to offer co words and when to allow a silence He had a stock of memorial prayers that ht balance You could say he had developed the craft and had a good funeral technique

After Sara died, however, Paul felt the full