Nature Blog - Prompt Entry #3

Cascade Mountain watched over me throughout my childhood. He saw me play tag in the front yard, saw me ride my bike up and down the streets of my neighborhood, saw me climb and subsequently fall out of my neighbor's tree. Under his watchful gaze, I walked to school and later, waited for the bus. When I played imaginary games of unicorns and princesses and cloaked enemies, he indulged my fantasies and allowed himself to be the safe place, the source of magic, the eternal "far, far away." He was always, first and foremost, my playmate.

I could always gauge the weather by her looks and reactions. When she was frosty, snow catching on her sides in uneven lines, I knew to take a coat. When she was blanketed in white, I knew to wear my boots, too. When she was green, I looked forward to warmer, longer days, and when she grew tired of the heat and faded to yellow, I, too, wilted a little under the sun. She put on her brightest and finest colors for only a few weeks in the fall, but I danced with her and her falling leaves every year. She was a guide, a compass for my life.

An old friend, a constant companion, he was always there. He was firm and unyielding where he stood, and though the rest of the world might change around him, he did not budge. I took him for granted for most of my childhood, never questioning his complacency or patience. Overtime, I grew to recognize the cracks and wrinkles on his wide, large face and body, and when I close my eyes, I can still see his shape, mellow peaks and shallow troughs, rocky sides and evenly falling slopes, foothills that stretch out and make him three-dimensional. He was my protector, sheltering me through his familiarity and constance.

There were other mountains, other friends, but none that I recognized so immediately as Cascade. Their faces were vague in my mind, maybe one or two distinguishing characteristics standing out to me. Cascade, on the other hand, was almost as familiar to me as my own body. Though I grew up, it seemed she never did. She was as old as the hills and stayed that way, the years doing nothing to change her except her clothes. It wasn't until I left and came back that I saw what the years had done to her, millenniums of sun and wind and snow and rain. But she's still there, right where I left her, always watching and waiting with me.