the voices of the mountains

I want to say something about finding my place and my people. About the deep human desire for connection and roots, for depth, for investment. About figuring out where and with whom I am most at peace...and doing whatever it takes to be there. 

Toward the end of my time in Texas, I began having significant health problems. What started as gastrointestinal issues and major weight loss turned to emergency room visits and cardiologist appointments and heart tests. I thought I might have cancer. I began obsessively scanning my skin, mouth, inner eyelids, fingernails for strange moles or signs of growths. I watched my bowel and bladder habits and kept meticulous track of my weight loss, of my heart rate and blood pressure. Every small nuance and change was cause for documentation. If not cancer, surely a heart defect. I could visibly see the tip of my heart beating out from under my rib cage, my veins grossly distended, heart rate in the high hundreds. Mom would call, and I’d inform her of my findings, and upcoming appointments. Time and again, she’d offer just this: “maybe you’re stressed?” I pushed back. NO. I am totally chill. If I was stressed, I’d do something about it! I’d ask for help! I’m totally fine. I have something WRONG WITH  ME, MOM. I AM SICK. I was flying back to Oregon for a job shadow, then back to Texas to graduate and be in two weddings and pack my loft in a day and help a friend pack her house in two and making preparations for getting all my stuff shipped to Oregon on pallets and making sure my car was up to speed for the week-long journey home with dad and saying goodbye to my kindred-spirit Baylor friends and coming to terms with the fact that I was young and single and jobless and moving home to a town of 2,000 with seemingly zero prospects for either husbands or jobs and working on diplomatic explanations to offer the many well-wishers who felt the need to continually remind me of those two facts, and, and, EVERYTHING WAS FINE. Except me.

It’s been a full two months since moving back to this little town, nestled ‘neath the mountains I love, and my health problems have vanished entirely. Not a single issue since the day I left Texas. You know what I think? Mom was right. Though I didn’t notice any psycholgical feelings of stress, my body and psyche were being put through the ringer. I had been living for fifteen months in a place that provided NO peace. I had been out of my element, far from my family and close friends and mountains...and I was strained.

I wonder how many of us live that way, and think it’s fine. They say if you throw a frog in tepid water and slowly bring it to a boil, he’ll let himself be boiled alive. My boss just got back from a quick trip to L.A., and he was recounting details of the trip. “We could only run one, MAYBE two, errands in a day. Planned three hours for a fifteen-minute errand, to account for traffic.” I’m not picking on L.A. here, but substitue nearly any big-city name, and it’s the same story. “That’s just life,” some will say. But is it? Does it have to be? Are stress-induced heart attacks and strokes and cancer and hair loss “just life,” too? Do they have to be? I wonder how many of our bodies are being strained by unhealthy physical environments. How many of our lungs are crying for clear air, stomachs for clean water, skin for healthy sunshine? 

Might there be something profound to be said for places where we are more connected with the earth, with creation? It has been said that we go to cities to see the work and power of humans...and we go to the wilderness to see the work and power of God. Man, I’ve gotta tell you--if I have a choice to wake up every day to see either the work of humans or the work of God, I’d be a fool to choose the former. Infrastructure is important, and I realize I am a product of its benefits, but can’t there be too much of any good thing? When the earth sighs, and concrete skyscrapers turn to rubble, do we realize that we don’t have as much control as we’d like to think? When we become rats on the wheel of progress--racing and racing and climbing higher only to realize we have become anonymous cogs, do we stop and reconsider? 

There’s something significant about being here, home, living again in the village that raised me...and helping to raise those who are growing up now. Something about digging in, down through the top soil, and putting in roots, about living a life that is deep and meaningful, about not merely working for the sake of work but finding the sort of work that allows me to be of service to others--to help others and build relationships and look at interactions through a long-term lens. 

I can walk these mountains, this high desert, and see my way in the dark--under starlight alone. I know the paths, and I am still learning them. I want to be here until I’ve learned and followed them all, and then teach my children and grandchildren to walk them, too. I don’t want to hasten to places because they’re tagged on Instagram or because a Facebook video says they’re the new hot spots. I want to be taken by friends, and by those older and wiser and more well-walked than I. I want my hair to silver and skin to wrinkle in the shadow of the mountains under which I once frolicked and flew kites with Dad, as a child...because it is by re-visiting places that never change that one realizes how much she, herself, has.
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In these glacial lakes and between the ponderosa pines, I can breathe deep and reflect. I recall memories--of times long-gone, when I “came here with” this friend or that friend or those people. Here, the seasons mirror life and remind us that change is coming--that new life is on its way but winter must first bring the cold. 

I walk into the market, across the street from Mom and Dad’s little house in town, and Melvin gives me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. He’s watched me grow, and he’s owned that little store since I was just a babe. It is in places like this, small places...intimate places...that we are best known and loved. I used to think how nice it must be to be anonymous in the Big City...and then I became so and realized that all I’ve ever wanted, all any of us really want, is to be fully known...and loved anyway. 

For now, and I do hope forever, this place is where I am most at peace. 

​Coming down the mountain a few mornings ago, Pocahontas’ words played their melody through my mind: 

You think you own whatever land you land on
The earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name
You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew, you never knew
Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sun-sweet berries of the earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once, never wonder what they're worth
The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other,
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends
Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or let the eagle tell you where he's been
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind
How high does the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know
And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
For whether we are white or copper-skinned
We need to sing with all the voices of the mountain
Need to paint with all the colors of the wind
You can own the earth and still
All you'll own is earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind

I hope each of you finds your earthly Place. I don’t believe any of us can be fully satisfied until we are with Jesus, in the Heaven for which we were created, but I do believe it’s possible to be intentional about having as much peace as possible, here on earth. Find a place where people smile and wave and let each other merge onto the road; where you can walk around barefoot in the grass and dive into a cold lake once in a while; where cars slow down or move over for bikers; where you can grow your own food sometimes and the air is clean. Where the sky is clear enough to see the stars at night. Where you know people and are known. 

Find somewhere where you wake up and think, my goodness Someone must have perfectly orchestrated the natural world to create all this beauty. Where you can look out at the created order and realize that Someone will always love you, and always has. ​​​And where, if you lay real still under the twinkling night sky, you can hear the voices of the mountains and the wolves crying to the blue corn moon.