Soliliquy
- Christopher R. Moore, Editor
I climbed to the top of a mountain this past weekend. I do not believe it was a named peak, at least certainly not in the order of Shasta or Washington or "Sawtooth". Why was it not deemed important or substantial or popular enough to be christened in the fashion of its nearest neighbors? It did, after all, have a U.S. Coast and Geologic Survey marker atop the highest boulder, a dull bronze jewel celebrating man's partial domination of the upward direction. This piece of foreign metal proclaimed that we have been here, we can walk up high mountains with hammers and bits of cement and then do trigonometric calculations. The date on the bronze read "1928". Had the forest explorers lost interest in this peak? just one of thousands of others, giving a panorama of an equivalent 360 degrees to that of any other peak? Or was it perhaps that since mountains don't move all that much, since they tend to stay out of the rat race, a new marker was superfluous? I could not, to the chagrin of my cartographic side, match the queer serial number (43N58TF-W?) on the marker to the strange notation on my topographic map in order to check my theory. Maybe this peak wasn't on the map?-the squiggly lines representing altitude changes seemed to swirl about in my approximate vicinity, but weren't they parallel there, not round-ish? The shades of green turned to brown, to white as the two-dimensions stretched out of the paper to emulate the deific Third. A paper tear between one particular representation of ridgeline may have been the root of some of the difficulties. Mercator sure had it easy back then - only half the world to deal with, or approximately that. Up top, on a small, craggy plateau of about ten feet square, I sat, in the exact center. The center, for me, after putting away my maps and confusion, was the spot equidistantly distant from the edges. The edges, save for the one by which I made my semi-daring ascent, were in the persuadingly vertical alignment. I came to realize that one small stumble would be my last small stumble - an awfully large stumble would follow