Climbing Mountains

One of my favorite movies is The Sound of Music. When I was a little girl, I always pretended to be Julie Andrews and went on long walks and long bike rides singing songs from that musical. When I was in need of encouragement, I sang Climb Every Mountain. I had to either scare away all little creatures with the impossibly high "till you find your dream!" concluding notes, or drop it an octave. If I was high on a deserted mountain top, I would shriek it out and the poor daisies in the field would close their petals.

I had a favorite mountain to climb in Binghamton, NY. We lived in the foothills of the Adirondacks. The mountain was across the street from our neighborhood, covered with forests and open fields, and it was huge. It rivaled Mt. Everest. I would often pack a lunch and head for the hills, singing under my breath until I hit the deserted slope, and then I would belt out, "Climb every mountain, search high and low, follow every by-way, every path you know...." while puffing up the steep scale, huffing to the distant peak. In the back of my mind, I knew that had I not packed lunch, surely I would have died on that precipice, my last ounce of strength exerted to reach the summit. Besides singing at the top of my lungs, I would contemplate life, and goals, and heartbreak. But I would soldier on, determined, fortified by the message of the song, and when I reached the peak, I would gaze out for hundreds of miles across a land studded with possibilities and dreams. I had conquered the mountain and thought perhaps I would be able to summon the strength now for ninth grade.

As an adult, I return often to visit my folks in Binghamton, NY. The "mountain" is covered with houses now. No open fields or forests of hope remain. And someone also shrunk the mountain. I don't know how they did it, but it is now just a bump, a small hill. I still shake my head every time I see it. What happened to the mountain?

I suspect that is similar to how I will feel someday, standing in Heaven, looking back over the eternity of my life that lasted but a moment. I think I will be smiling, probably with my old cat Friskey on my lap, and I will wonder where did all those unscalable mountains go?

Genesis 49:26
Your father's blessings are greater than the blessings of the ancient mountains, than the bounty of the age-old hills.