The Mountain

I feel golden rays on my shoulders.  It's good, warming my insides with a gentle caress.  Thank you sun, I think to myself.  I needed that after the harsh winter.  Snow makes me sad, covering me with cold as it does.  But I've learned each season brings both good and bad.  The bad is coming now, I can feel it even as the sun, the good, coddles me.

The first one comes, I can feel his heartbeat as he climbs. Harsh feet tramp along my sides, spikes digging into the soft flesh of my spring offerings and buds.  I can always hear the harsh breath of those who wish to mount me as they strain to attain my peaks.  They make me mad, these hikers, these stupid trekkers, interested only in heights.  Never looking when uncaring boots stomp whatever grows across their path.

My dearest friends, the little ones who emerge new and shaking from their mothers' wombs, and stand, knees not yet straight and strong, to wobble on my sides, nuzzle nearby teats and nibble at the succulent grasses and herbs I provide for them.  I love them.  They are proof of life and they honor me by using me as their home.  My joy is watching them grow, gain their horns or learn to hunt in stealth, limbs grow strong, climb my rocky  heights and mate to start anew the cycle of life.  All watched with pride by me, their home, the mountain.

But those hikers, the climbers, the ones who poke sharp sticks into my flesh, drop careless fire in dry brush, they make me mad!  I try my revenge on them, place rolling stones in their paths, loose gravel that spills them down the track.  But to no avail.  They come, ubiquitous fancy clothing, hooks and spikes and ropes meant solely to spoil and injure me.  They come, endless in their processions of conquest, packs flung over their backs holding supplies to aid in their constant quest.  Damn them!

In winter, they should go home to their fires and hearths on the flatland.  But no, they seek me still, with different poles to guide them down my now silken curved ribbons of ice and snow.  Is there no respite?  It seems mankind refuses to take a hint when I sneeze, tumbling crests and moguls of snow and rocks to bury them as they make their futile attempts to glide to safety.

They cut into my being to make their roads, perch their villages on my flanks, dig into my core for stones only they value.  They think they own me, can take what I offer, hunt my friends who live on me in peace.  It saddens me to see how arrogant they are. 

They don't understand. I am the mountain, and when I have had enough of them, I belch and shiver as my wounded sides easily shake them off,  tumbling helpless to the hard arms of the flatland below.  It is my joke on humanity.  In case they forgot.  I am mountain.  I.  Am.  Eternal.