Bruce Barcott Quotes
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The thing that I still come back away with is how close so many people feel to the mountain Mt. Rainier emotionally and psychically, and yet how far away the world is when you're on the mountain.
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“In the deep forests of Mount Rainier, the sun doesn’t rise, it leaks in thin bands through the trees.”
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A gripper of a read . . . Silence revives the cliff’s-edge drama of those Jazz age climbs and drives home the tragedy of Mallory’s death.
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We know people by their stories: their history, their habits, their secrets, their triumphs and failures. We know them by what they do. We want to know mountains too, but they’ve got no story. So we do the next best thing. We throw ourselves onto them and make the stories happen.
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“People used to avoid mountains, but now we seek their company. We come for the pretty sights, but also to find a place still free from those life-saving constraints. We come to the mountain seeking beauty and terror.”
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“This is how I think of Mount Rainier, not as an icon of permanence but as a source of relentless change, a mountain forever falling.”
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“Falling water has always been a healing balm when I find myself with a despairing mind and cracking soul. The winter rains of Puget Sound, which never start and stop but only drizzle on, signal the cool comfort of home.”
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“Complexity yields resilience.”
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This is what we see when we look up at Rainier, the beauty, the horror, the awe the unbelievability of size that confirms our own consequence on this earth. We look at the mountain, like god and can imagine nothing larger. Its incompressible life-span reminds us of the fleeting mortality of our own bones. It looms over our lives on clear days and and stay present but hidden through the clouds of winter. Like god it remains everywhere forever.
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The mountain receives our expressions and becomes part of us; we imprint our memories upon it and trust it with out dearest divisions of out lives. Mt. Rainier does not exist under our feet. Mt. Rainier lives in our minds