11,307 Feet

I came up here to write. Well, to write and look at the scenery. I was hoping the latter would help with the first but it’s really having the reverse effect. I had hoped that, in the face of a pristine sunset over a landscape of pure solidified natural wonder, I would be overwhelmed with important, impactful, inspiring words begging to be put down on my paper. Instead, I am struck by how utterly incapable my own thoughts are at articulating my view from a mile above the desert valley below.

One thought does occur though, a misconception I, and I imagine most people who have been on a plane before, have unknowingly harbored since my first flight. While the distant patchwork majesty of the world from cruising altitude seems utterly unique, a marvel of our modern age of technology, any person who made their way to the top of Brian Head in the area’s 12,000 years of human habitation would have been met with a view just as remarkable and infinitely more expansive. I’d wager any person standing here knows more about how the Earth looks from above than any passenger on Delta.

The trees give up growing around 200 feet down slope, and I can hardly blame them as I sit wheezing after a deceptively breathtaking stroll from my car. What plants do grow at the top are a smaller, heartier bunch, with tufts popping out between the hard volcanic rocks crumbling out on top of the ridge: short grasses and mosses, holdouts from the last ice age, clinging desperately to the last pinnacle of space where it’s a proper temperature dammit. It puts things in perspective, I guess.

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I’ve decided that one of the most confusing things in the world is a ski resort during the summer. I know on an intellectual level that there can’t be snow there year round, That’s just how things work.

It’s not the sort of confusion that arises from not understanding something, but rather, understanding something that contradicts itself, like someone telling you that a relative is attractive.

Or mushrooms.

Are you meat or vegetable, you tiny arboreal abomination? Pick a side.

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I’m going to quote someone whose name I can't remember at the moment. I should remember their name, because I have heard both the quote and its source twice in the last three days. The quote, as I’m remembering it now, goes “At some point, that something is beautiful is enough. You don’t need to photograph it, write about it, or even see it. It is enough.” Up here, I think I agree. I’m not sure I understand, but I agree.

There. A third type of confusion.

I think this one’s called faith.

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There’s a fire crew up here. I can see the charred canyon to the North of here, and the air down in the valleys is a little smokey. They kept the fire from burning down the town where it started (the ski resort, which I’m looking down on now) but it’s made its way through more than 68,000 acres of forest.

To the South are just about as many dead trees — not burned, though. They’re grey and bare, sticking out over the greener trees around them. An interpretive sign said that the forest had been hit by a particularly potent beetle. The beetle affected forest will be back to its pre-beetle state in about 100 years. I don’t know that the time range for the fire is. I know there are some plants whose seeds are released by the fire. They need the fire to spread. I wonder if any part of the forest needs beetles.

The fire chief is off on the other side of the ridge, looking out over the valley that a week ago was engulfed in flame. The fringes, still burning a mile away, are moving out towards another town. I can only imagine what is going through his head. He’s probably been up here before. He’s probably here to look at the fire, to assess the damage. I can’t know if he feels that same wonder I do now, looking over the broad desert valley and the jagged, forested mountains. I don’t know if he ever did.

I look at this man. So far away he is a silhouette of a spec, above the jagged horizon of the ridge and inside the sawtooth horizon of mountains a hundred miles away. There are other people on mountains I can see now. I can see so many it’s almost a certainty. Are they looking at me? At us?

Is it enough for them?

As I look across at the fire chief, I see a question, which is at the same time millions of questions, which, taken together, almost resemble an answer. Are we the questions we ask of ourselves, or those we ask of others? Looking across the ridge, I can almost remember the answer.

My fingers are freezing. Evenings get cold quick at 11,000 ft.