Life, Written Softly

Why are mountains so alluring?

The majestic yet silent presence of Nature and its abundance always brings a sense of calm to me, the nerves seem to quiet down, the heartbeats start slowing…the hurriedness of daily survival is replaced by a sense of peaceful nothingness. A sense of nothingness that is born amidst the towering trees with their lush green thick canopies, the breathtaking blooms and their magical colours spread all around, the random bounty of Nature’s unfathomable prowess and fertility oozing in the creepers and the rivulets, the birdsongs and the orchids, the raindrops trickling down the spider web spread across the hanging shoots of the violet succulents and the chance encounters with the thrush and the flycatcher- all of those make you realise there is a larger business going on here. Your mundane, urban, dry, selfish, unnerving, over-whelming, distant businesses are miniscule and insignificant amongst all of these!! The mountains along with the abundance of Nature all around it immediately humble you, in a way, that after a point of time you realise you have already gone silent, your senses are busy hearing…everything from all around. Everything there seem to have a rhythm, they all vibrate in some unknown universal accordance. Back in the city we live a plastic life, dead, dry, decaying and extremely tiring…of course it is tiring for the walking dead to pretend that they are alive! But the moment you step into the mountains something deep down in your being, some integral code in your spine seems to start vibrating with the vibrations around you. And that leads to a sense of letting go, the vibration automatically picks you up and you start gliding without any effort of your own and soon you have ascended into a state of rejuvenating nothingness. 

When travelling in the mountains it is always the tiniest or the most insignificant of things that attract me the most; like, the little healthy fern shoot that grows alone next to the even tinier stream that keeps flowing down the side of the hill, the lonely raven that sits high up on the branches of the prehistoric birch- no matter how much you try it keeps hiding its face in the electric green foliage, the sudden emergence of the little village comprising of hardly eight to ten huts that sits right on the edge of the mountainous slope set amongst wild tea gardens and a bird watching hill top. When asked the people said they hardly need anything from the outside world to survive, the tea plants spread- they pick their own leaves, dry them through vivid steps thereby storing enough for the entire year. The grow their own crops and vegetables backed by the amazing weather and mineral rich mountain soil. The mountains have an eco-system that somehow makes the humans who stay there a continuous part of the vibration that flows all around and within. 

And perhaps that is why the mountains allure me so deeply, because they do not ask to be understood, only felt. They stand there in their ancient stillness, carrying the language of rain, stone, wind, and root, and in their quiet company one begins to remember a slower, truer way of being. Somewhere between the fern and the cloud, the stream and the sparrow, the little village and the vast green hush, I find myself softened, returned to myself, and a little more willing to believe that life, in all its fleetingness, can still be tender. 

The mountains do not merely offer an escape; they offer a kind of love, a moment of peace, a breath of serenity — patient, wordless, and immeasurably enduring.