Meditation: Annie Dillard on Mountains

A quote from one of my favorite authors, Annie Dillard, from her amazing book, A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

The mountains ... are a passive mystery, the oldest of all. Theirs is the one simple mystery of creation from nothing, of matter itself, anything at all, the given. Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back...

I was feeling restless Sunday evening, so I drove down to Manitou Springs and walked down Manitou Avenue for a while. The air was warm and I'd just finished reading a book about the open road and so I couldn't sit still. And I was thinking about how important the mountains are to me and why I am putting up with so much tension and chaos and unsettledness at the moment; why I often feel isolated; why the decision to relocate to more hospitable environs isn't an easy one; why even relationships sometimes tend to take second place to those giant spires of rock and earth. But, like Annie suggests, I heaved my spirit into the mountains long ago and they have absorbed it, sealed it up. I wonder if, by engaging them, living among them, I am not merely trying to find that surrendered spirit...but if I find it, would I really want it back?