Dear Mountains
I love you 3000!
I do not know where to start because my love for you is beyond expression. I will still try though, for the sake of my writing and an attempt to give it a shape, a tangible form. I have loved you since I can remember. Did I fall for you as a child when I turned two in your lap (My dad was transferred to Kashmir) or is it something that I am born with? I will never know, and I guess I don't want to either. Because honestly, what I feel for you has no bounds, no measures, and certainly no end. You are, and forever will be my internal love.
And why is that, I wonder? Because you always are, you know, present. For centuries, history speaks of you as being the wall that protects any nation from her malicious neighbors. You speak of a million stories, cultures, flora, and fauna characteristic to you and you only. You have seen it all. The rise and fall of mankind, the battles that killed kingdoms and perished civilizations, yet you are here unperturbed, untamed in all your glory and might.
But, personally, for me, you are more than that. Like a father, you have provided me with direction when I am lost. Loved me like a soulmate when I was alone and as a friend, let me conquer my doubts when I was confused. I come to you whenever I am at a certain two-ways in my life and somehow in your company I always find myself. As Sir Edmund Hillary said, “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves”.
I have even found solace in you after a heartbreak. The way you hold your ground despite the seasons: winters, winds, or summers. Whether the snow falls and freezes on every bit of you, whether the winds blow away all life on you or the summer sun melts all that picturesque snow that made you shine. You stand tall despite. In doing so, you inspire me to rise above my own situation and limitations. In happiness, in joy, in sadness, in despair you are unaffected and I aspire to be like you. To let everything come and go and to remain in constant confidence of my being inside whatever the color the world is outside. I am reminded of Jane Austen's famous prose, “What are men to rocks and mountains?”
As I grow older, my admiration for you grows stronger and more innate. It’s not the kind of love that needs validation, a zillion confessions, and a trillion reminders. It’s not a spark to be rekindled but a flame ever luminous. This love is as present as my breath and as absent as the horizon. Because, when I look at you I see in the mirror. When I look at you, I feel my soul and then all of a sudden I am you, and, slowly I am no one.
“Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves and half in love with oblivion.” — Robert Macfarlane
**
Just in time, responding to Vashni Stories January prompt. Hope you like this journey from my heart to the mountains. Thanks for getting me back into the writing action!
Check my debut poetry book here : https://linktr.ee/preetigoel
