ATOP MT. WASHINGTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE

From meadow and valley fields, though open deciduous woods, then dense evergreens growing smaller as road’s ascent grows longer and higher and vistas begin to open. Then in a well- marked demarcation trees reach their end of line. Grasses, sedges, few small flowers too, barely clinging to mountain side, mosses rare and lichens, yellow bright, declare tree line is finally reached. Life becomes most difficult.

Winds whip, abrade with specks of rock, freezes thaw, then freeze again, well below the base-line norm. Botanic life is shorn of height, hiding from the furies might, between weather ravaged rock, sheltered in frost created cracks, within a pile of freeze created rocks.
Primitive and basic, life is lived in extreme, as from beginning it does seem. Water is life’s necessity, water is the enemy. While flowing moist it nourishes, wind-driven, frozen-dry discourages.









Imagination cannot comprehend the time that has been spent to construct and destruct such massive stuff. Fragile and easily destroyed we are, civilized but not too far, searching for a place to realize who we may be and Why. Reduced to insignificance we seek to find our magnificence, but there is no inevitable defense, for soon we all will be past tense. That is what unites us all, visitors from around the globe, to clamor to the top to find ourselves in awe.

















At the top of the northeast all the world comes to see, by foot, by rail, by car, truly an amazing sight. Many languages spoken, bound by a common bond, to stand atop Mt. Washington, to stand atop and stare. Stare to see forever, everywhere, a universal need, a universal desire. Many cluster a the top, the goal being reached, but few stop along the way to discover that the journey is the true goal, the peak but a brief reward, a trophy.













The mountain train has been climbing the this high peak forever, a hundred fifty years. The highest peak was much higher once, forever ago, two hundred million years, give or take a few. Forevers are indeed forever, forever will they seem. Each forever is forever in its own esteem. Each a cosmic blink depending how you think. On the macro-side the frost chunks the rock apart, forever freezes thaw and water slips between, on the micro-scale lichen does the same! One an act of physics, the other of chemistry.












Billowy white the clouds that float the sky become gray fog when with mountain peak collide.
Slow the rock does bend and fold, perception does lie, rock is not as solid as we’ve oft been told, for solid rock so old belies such tales told bold.


Browns and tans and greens and yellows, bright blooms , dull seeds, bright seeds, dull blooms, in the late summer the stress of living shows how great the toll extracted. The pain of reality, reversing one small patch of entropy, is obvious, yet so painful to see. Wonder what the point is really meant to be. Strive and die forever, but prepare to future face? Such is the faith of living, running the great race. For each life exists to better life for life yet to be.