The Mountain

This morning when I woke up, I saw it was snowing outside. It was silent like death, and tiny snowflakes laid carefully on the already white ground. In fact it was so silent inside my student dorm, and outside too, as the sky melted into the road and the snow covered trees, that I started to think about my dad.

No description of him is needed, simply he was like any other dad, a bit weird to others, but familiar to me, with little flaws that were immensely magnified through my eyes. In my younger years, my chest boiled with frustration as I saw other kids’ dads, always funnier, less strict, more normal, more like the dad you see in American movies. In fact I was so busy looking at other dads, that I forgot to look at mine. He was always there around me, but I could barely remember his face, as I avoided his gaze. I never said I loved him; I never said it as a kid, because I didn’t want to, and growing up I never said it either, because I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I had never said it to him before, and things that are kept inside soon become out of proportion, like a proliferating plant slowly covering every windows of a house, a plant so big that it can no longer pass through the door.

And as love is supposed to grow from inside out, and mine didn’t, it grew sickly. It was so frail I sometimes thought it didn’t exist, and my heart contracted with shame for something I couldn’t feel. My dad’s love for me was a radiant heat I could not withstand, so I dodged all the bridges he tried to build between us, over and over. My weapon was my silence, and my scarce words were acerbic.

My father shared with me his love of nature and hiking, yet I took this gift like a thief, and would later go hiking alone, without him. I remember starry nights when we went camping together, the smell of pine trees and green, luxuriant moss. He taught me what silence really feels like. It was when birds paused briefly their signing, and the alpine summer wind would catch its breath for a second.

He told me about freedom, and what it meant to him. He would tell me about a cabin on the mountain he would have wanted to live in. While telling me about this life he didn’t live, his face lit up, yet even if I tried really hard, I could never see regret in his eyes.

He taught me to explore and stay curious forever. As he would tell me about the countries he wished he would have gone to, I would feel a wonderful shiver running in my spine. Just like that was born in me the desire to see the world. He would tell me his travel to Ireland on his bike, and I imagined the green landscapes, foggy mornings, the ruthless ocean, and the strange loneliness of being alone in a foreign country.

My dad was never bitter, always hopeful. My pessimist self would watch him with great irritation, because I could not understand him.

One day I went on a mountain, and got lost. It was a gloomy day at the start of March, a perfect day for a hike, in early spring. It wasn’t too cold, just enough to give a last taste of winter. I hiked with joy and thrill, as I felt youth flowing through my muscles. The already thick coat of snow covering the trail became even thicker as I reached the top of the mountain. The temperature slowly shifted, and from gloomy, it became stormy. It was one of those majestic moment you sometime find in nature : when it is quiet and peaceful, nobody around, not even a bird chirping, only snow falling without any other witnesses than you. Your eyes become the only container to accommodate an immensely beautiful world.

But this beauty was cold and rough, and I was a warm, insignificant creature, alone, and gradually more scared as snow started to pile up on the trail. It was now barely recognizable. It took me a little while to realize it had become invisible: I went a bit off trail, came back on my steps, and saw there was no more trail to distinguish. The sky was progressively more opaque, light seemed dimer with every passing minute. I thought the sun would soon disappear behind the horizon, drowned in the cloudy sky. Fear fogged my brain, altered my perception of time, and what seemed to me a dying afternoon was probably barely after two o’clock. Panic took a while to settle in, but once it did, I started shaking uncontrollably. I was ridiculously small and helpless in the immensity of the forest. How to explain that it was at this moment, on this remote mountain in another country, that I felt the most love for my dad and my whole family?

I sat down to think. The cold calmed me down. When I got up, I strangely felt more mature, and by the time my feet found their way to the base of the mountain, I felt older.

Snow slowly changed into rain as I drove back to the hotel. There was still light, as if time had stopped, from up there in the immaculate, silent realm, until now in the noisy reality. Dusk now dragged endlessly, the sun seemed to refuse to give up. I had a lot of time to think, but my thoughts were scattered. I still had to sew them together, and understand a new feeling that had just grown in me. It was a new type of love, for my mom, my dad, my brothers. It was powerful but silent, obvious yet complex. It was a love fueled by humility, sadness, fear and hope.

It felt like being safe in the arms of a mother, and capable in the eyes of a father.