Every December, International Mountain Day comes and goes with the same soft-spoken dignity as the landscapes it hopes to honour. Unlike the splashier commemorations those dedicated to coffee, emojis, or whatever else the internet has decided deserves affection this one whispers. Mountains, after all, do not need applause. They are already taller than us. But the question that lingers, uncomfortably, is whether we still deserve them.
Mountains occupy a particular space in the human imagination, part cathedral, part proving ground, part existential dare. They lure pilgrims, poets, mountaineers, botanists, reckless teenagers, and the spiritually confused. They are metaphors even before they are destinations. To “climb a mountain” is to aspire; to “move a mountain” is to achieve the impossible. Yet in the age of climate anxiety and portable espresso machines, our relationship with the world’s high places has taken on a fretful, slightly absurd quality. We bring drones to sacred peaks and leave trash where prayers once were whispered. We speak of conservation while our actions involve far more selfies than stewardship.
International Mountain Day was invented to remind us that mountains matter, environmentally, culturally, hydrologically, aesthetically, spiritually, and, for some people, recreationally. But I’m not convinced that reminders are our problem. If anything, modern society is drowning in reminders. My phone has informed me, three times this week, that I should drink more water and stretch. Somewhere in the algorithm’s vision of my destiny, I am expected to become a hydrated contortionist. And yet International Mountain Day doesn’t trend. It remains a quiet ritual. Perhaps that is the first clue to what it can teach us.
Mountains do not need advocacy spokespeople, though they occasionally get them in the form of celebrities who own puffer jackets. What mountains need, what they demand is perspective. They ask us, politely but firmly, to reconsider our scale. Stand at the base of a mountain long enough and your ego begins to thin out, like oxygen at altitude. It becomes harder to believe the world revolves around your inbox when a ridge of ancient rock is looming above you, entirely indifferent to your schedule.
The trouble is that society has become allergic to feeling small. We’re encouraged to maximize ourselves, to monetize our hobbies, to curate our personal brands as if we are all freelance deities. Humility is rarely fashionable. Yet mountains are masters of humility. They dwarf us physically, of course, but they also dwarf our timelines. We measure crises in election cycles or quarterly reports; mountains measure them in glacial melt and tectonic drift. Their patience is geologic. Ours, meanwhile, is barely enough to wait for a kettle to boil.
International Mountain Day invites us to recalibrate that impatience. And the irony is that the mountains themselves are suffering precisely because of our refusal to slow down, our industry, our extraction, our traffic of tourists hoping to “do” a mountain the way one might do brunch. Entire ecosystems are unravelling at altitudes once considered too remote for human interference. Village communities living on slopes and valleys, the world’s quiet custodians are facing water shortages, landslides, and shrinking grazing lands. The air is thinner, not just with oxygen, but with certainty.
And yet, if you spend time with people who live close to mountains, you discover a different worldview one that doesn’t try to conquer or commodify. It’s a worldview shaped by reciprocity rather than dominance. Shepherds, farmers, and guides don’t merely inhabit mountain terrain; they negotiate with it. Every season is a conversation. Every misstep a lesson. There is something profoundly democratic about how mountains treat their inhabitants: altitude rewards no one. Wealth, fame, credentials, the number of followers on your social platform, none of these things guarantee safety or comfort. You are as vulnerable as the path beneath your feet.
Which brings us to the deeper essence of International Mountain Day: it is less about the mountains and more about the people we become when we encounter them. Step onto a trail, and you are confronted with the limits of your body, the knots of your mind, and the peculiar optimism that compels you upward despite both. By the time you reach the summit or more realistically, a scenic overlook near the middle, you’ve gained something immensely valuable: perspective, the kind not available in convenience stores or corporate workshops.
It would be nice if we treated mountains not as trophies, but as teachers. Their lessons are stubbornly analog in a digital age, move slowly, breathe deeply, look carefully, do not assume you are in charge. Respect the weather. Respect your own limits. Respect the fact that you are an impermanent guest on terrain older than your language.
In many ways, we need mountains now more than ever, not because they need saving, though many of them do, but because they remind us how to be human in an era of distraction. They demand attentiveness. They demand humility. They demand that we pause the infinite scroll of our anxieties and look up, literally and metaphorically.
International Mountain Day may never achieve celebrity status. It may always lurk quietly in December, overshadowed by holiday shopping and year-end exhaustion. But maybe that’s appropriate. Mountains are not designed for fanfare. They thrive in silence. They prefer reverence to trending hashtags. And perhaps the most fitting way to honour them is simply to adopt a bit of their stillness, their patience, their unapologetic solidity.
Because in the end, it is not the mountains that need us. It is we who need their reminder that life is larger, older, and far more breathtaking than the chaos we manufacture daily. And if we listen, truly listen, we might find that the climb begins not on a trailhead, but within.
No comments:
Post a Comment