Misty Mountains

On a clear day, I can see the mountains in the distance, rising pale blue and purple above the valley, their tops dusted with snow. Even on a perfectly clear day, which is seldom to be had, they are wonderfully remote. They rise to beautiful points, and are the embodiment of the archetypal mountain range. Seen closely, however, they are disappointing, and not steep enough, or craggy enough, and somehow lacking when compared to that distant vision.

What, then, are those mountains to me? I always think of them as the Misty Mountains, borrowing the name from Tolkien, as it is particularly evocative. But as I don't think I can positively define them, I will try for a moment to negatively define them.

They are not the mountains of Middle Earth, or even how I picture the great Misty Mountains of the Hobbit and LOTR, although they are reminiscent of those. Neither are they the impossibly beautiful mountains of Faerie, that may save you or kill you or both together. These mountains are not the mountains of dragons, although they are closer to belonging to the dragons than to the spacemen. They are not the great mountains of Spencer, and most definitely they are not the mountains of Narnia and the North.

The great mountains are mythic, for they are like the mountains in a great myth, but they are from no myth that I have ever read. It is as though they wait, ever patiently, for the story to be written about them. To drive through these mountains is a pleasant experience, especially when the wildflowers color the hillside as a great impressionistic painting, but to drive through the mountains is to lose the mystic in the ordinary. I have long longed to go to the misty mountains, and I have long known that they cannot be reached by ordinary methods.

Those misty mountains are mythic, and impossible to attain. For me, they symbolize my desire for an undefinable something, a desire that Tolkien comes closest to expressing when he speaks of going 'over the Misty Mountains cold, to dungeons deep and dragons old.' They are not a safe nor comfortable thing, these misty, mythic mountains, but that doesn't stop me from wanting what they are.

In the spring, and while it is not exactly spring here, it is at least the advent of spring, I always am filled with a wanderlust. I want to travel the world, and beyond the world, and wander in strange lands. I want to climb the great misty mountains. But sadly, I cannot. It is this impossibility, though, that is part of the allure of the mountains. The mountains are a great paradox, and on days like today, I long for the unobtainable, beautiful mountains