When I Sing, Mountains Dance

by Irene Solà

Some men’s tongues get stuck and just shrivel in their mouths, and they don’t know how to open up and say nice things to their children, or nice things to their grandchildren, and that’s how family stories get lost, and you no longer know anything more than the dry bread you eat today and the rain that falls today and the ache in your bones today. Sad mountains.

Emotions are more naked up here too. More raw. More authentic. Life and death, life and death and instinct and violence are present in every single moment up here. The rest of us, we’ve forgotten how sublime life is. In the city we go through the motions with our watered-down lives. But here, here you really live each and every day. As soon as the weather turns, even if it’s just a gawky bit of early spring, I have this need to get up into the mountains, at least once a month. Leave it all behind and just spend a day in the fresh air.