The Mountain

The mountain stared back and me with its never changed expression. Its rock slanted at a perfect 60-degree slant to the left counterclockwise. How long was the mountain staring in human terms. Did it even notice when the first human settlers in the Las Vegas valley began building a downtown area. Did it understand the significance of the first casino, The Flamingo, built along what would become the strip where millions of tourists flocked each year to see world class shows and dump quarters into one-armed bandits?

When did it first pop its peak out of the primordial ocean that once engulfed the valley. Did it even care? Did it feel? Did it feel embarrassed about being shorter than Mt Charleston on the other side of the valley?

I wonder if it saw the first date I took to it. Where slyly grabbed her hand in the guise of steadying her steps on the rocks at its base. She told me later she liked how my hand felt. It wasn’t damp. She had no idea how dry Las Vegas was. Japan was damp like a wet kitchen rag after dish washing and Las Vegas dry like the inside of an oven that never set cooler than 100 degrees. We married a year later. We’re not Mormon so we didn’t have a ceremony in beautiful Church born of Joseph Smith. Instead, we booked the chapel of the largest hotel in the world at that time, The MGM Grand.

She was beautiful, but the mountain could see what I could as I stood next to her in the small space with no more than 20 friends and family attending. Just now I wondered why our two daughters didn’t attend the wedding, but we hadn’t made them yet. I guess they were there if you consider the eggs I would fertilize 3 and 7 years later were already sitting in a chamber of my bride’s body waiting. Hormones would eventually give them a signal to depart the pre-life waiting room. The mountain hasn’t met them, but they are both beautiful complex human beings.

They would love the mountain. They climb many of the mountain’s cousins in their adulthood. And my bride for 30 years has been here with me as we run errands always under the watching eye of the mountain. We look at it too but don’t give it a second thought. It’s pretty, but not worthy of visiting after the first time. It’s bald. Did it ever have trees? If it applied for a job, would it put “watcher of humans” on its résumé or maybe the more poetic position “usher of morning sun?”

As the shadows lengthen across its face, it will be the last thing lit in the valley. And when either my wife buries me or I bury her it will still be here watching. Or not watching whatever the case may be. And maybe in 100 or a 1000 years another young man will reach out his hand toward a beautiful woman and grab it. And as the planet hurls through the agents of time, wind and rain, will eventually grind the mount down to a hill. By then the desert will have transformed into a lush green meadow and the hill will reminisce about the valley it once watched over.