The View from Across

There is this one view, outside of the apartment.  This one view that... no matter how many times I glance at it, no matter how long I stare at it, I still can't quite believe in it.

I can't capture it on film (believe me I have tried), I can't photo document it (see below for a pathetic attempt), I can't begin to describe it even with all of the words at my disposal- because I just don't believe that it's actually, truly, terrifyingly there.

I don't get how it exists.  My eyes tell me it exists, but I don't understand it and I think my eyes might be lying.

The view?

On good days- days like today that are clear and sunny and the sky is such a bright blue that it's almost white- you can look across the water and see the mountains that bolster either side of our harbor.  But then, it's not just seeing the mountains that has me baffled and dumbstruck. Oh no, you look across that water and it's like you witness the passage of time in that view, in this view.  It is literally like watching billions of years- eons, eras, moments, monuments, minutes- happen in an instant.  The effect of every thrust of the earth's plates and every carving, fluid push of the ocean's waves- right there, right in front of you, me.

It's an impossible thing to take in, and yet I do almost every day.

On foggy, slightly evil and rainy days- every other day other than today- that view is still there, just hiding.  Those mountains are still present behind the clouds, ominous in a way that God or the Devil might be to those who believe.  Those mountains are hiding, but they are very much self-aware and very much alive in the cloudy ether.  Not hiding, perhaps, so much as waiting or biding.  They are steady, so still, yet pull at the marrow of my bones with such a wrenching force that even though I stand there captivated and somewhat subdued, I am utterly overcome with the desire to move toward them.  To be a part of them.

The mountains roll back against the sky for… ever.  One leads to another leads to another and they just don't stop, they never stop…

I think that's what really gets to me- the immensity and endlessness of the mountains- becoming increasingly more blue and shadowed until they match that sky I mentioned earlier and then slowly begin to fade into it.

It is. Unbelievable.

You've just got to trust me on this one, dear hearts.