Backyard Mountain

It’s my backyard mountain, 1900 foot Parker Mountain just out my door and up the street to the trailhead.  The kind of mountain that because I live at its base, I could so easily overlook, avoid, spurn just because it is HERE. HERE rather than THERE where all the newness and discovery and wonder lies, the new views and vistas in the peaks OUT THERE.

It’s just the mountain that’s HERE, ordinary and undramatic. A smooth wide trail up a floor of gray and brown moldering leaves. Small patches of bright ice easily navigable along the edges. Nothing too much, too hard, nothing like this something I’m carrying around inside me heavy all morning.  

Maybe its because it’s the last day of my time away. Maybe wondering what happened to all that energy and excitement I had about being HERE when I was away that seems to have gone ELSEWHERE now that I’m back home. What happened to all that passion about the connections I wanted to make, the conversations I wanted to have? Where did it all go?

A heavy gray cloud covered morning. Another disturbingly warm green lawned day here in the North Country when I came looking for cold and snow. 

Looking out here now on the trail for my credit card which I seem to have dropped when I pulled my phone out to take a picture. I wind back and forth over the spot I think I must have dropped it. A 50-50 chance that it landed on the blue side up. If its flopped down on the gray, I’ll be surprised if I find it amidst all these gray leaves. 

I negotiate making peace with myself. I can call and cancel the card. I imagine that I actually didn’t take the card out of my wallet. Give up on being kind and berate myself for putting the card in my coat pocket so it could drop out. When will I learn? Oh the gray day is doing its work!  

No card all the way back along the trail. None of the hikers I pass ask, Did you drop this?  

Back at the car, I open the door and there it is, HERE it is. Right HERE at the start of my journey. Right where I stepped out of HERE to go THERE. I kiss the card as I told myself I’d do if I in fact found it.  

But before even finding the card, I’d already found what I came looking for. 

A wander in the backyards mountain that took me from the woe of “Where is the snow?” and “What happened to my card?”, the discombobulations and confusion of a morning I planned and expected to be otherwise, to the wonder of all that is HERE. Including that bowl of hot soup waiting for me when I get back home.  Oh how fortunate and blessed I am truly to be living HERE!