The Mountains
Sep. 11th, 2003 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yldannLiving below sea level is strange. It's sort of like walking through molasses all day long, as the air is quite dense. The pressure is pervasive - I don't feel it unless I go to a higher altitude for a while and then come back. The few times I've gone to high altitudes, the pressure lessens and breathing and getting sunburned become very easy...
The feeling in the mountains is entirely different. Mountains can have a life and a consciousness of their own - Some of the peaks in Colorado remind me of surly old men. I'd be surly too if I had a bad case of the fleas... er,... miners. The vegetation is very different at high altitudes also. You get a lot of Aspen starting about halfway up the mountain, which grow best at around 8,000 feet. Then at around 9-10,000 feet everything stops growing except for lichens. Above a certain altitude, the frost doesn't melt. I always loved the mountains that are 15,000 feet or more. I can remember driving over Red Mountain Pass in Colorado. I was entirely terrified, and huddled on the floor of the car and refused to look. The speed limit was 3 miles per hour, and they meant it. There was no wall on the edge of this dirt road, you see, and it was 15,000 feet up in the air. The sheer drop to the right beckoned with a magnetic intensity to... fly -- be freeee.... Never again...
In Greece, when you achieve those heights, they make you park your car and use a donkey. That, in my opinion, is the way to go...
This picture is from the following website, which offers prints for sale: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/mcinroy/photos.htm - many pretty pictures of Scotland and Ireland. Above is a mountain on the Island of Skye.
The feeling in the mountains is entirely different. Mountains can have a life and a consciousness of their own - Some of the peaks in Colorado remind me of surly old men. I'd be surly too if I had a bad case of the fleas... er,... miners. The vegetation is very different at high altitudes also. You get a lot of Aspen starting about halfway up the mountain, which grow best at around 8,000 feet. Then at around 9-10,000 feet everything stops growing except for lichens. Above a certain altitude, the frost doesn't melt. I always loved the mountains that are 15,000 feet or more. I can remember driving over Red Mountain Pass in Colorado. I was entirely terrified, and huddled on the floor of the car and refused to look. The speed limit was 3 miles per hour, and they meant it. There was no wall on the edge of this dirt road, you see, and it was 15,000 feet up in the air. The sheer drop to the right beckoned with a magnetic intensity to... fly -- be freeee.... Never again...
In Greece, when you achieve those heights, they make you park your car and use a donkey. That, in my opinion, is the way to go...
This picture is from the following website, which offers prints for sale: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/mcinroy/photos.htm - many pretty pictures of Scotland and Ireland. Above is a mountain on the Island of Skye.