Mountains are extremists.

They elicit the need to pick a side. I like to verge on the edge of extremes. I crave conclusions. The culminating explanations that remain stagnant and consistent….There, I am at peace? ….There, like the mountains, I remain unbothered?

To verge on an extreme, I am so locked in, so far away from opposition. Extremes secure me as they engulf me in their polarization. It is not until the creeping in of contradiction, that I begin to doubt, lose confidence, and wonder if maybe I should completely sway the other way. Contradiction forces me constantly into motion, leaving me in a whirlwind of confusion, scattered somewhere in the middle of the extremes I desire. I am bombarded with a fleeting array of varying and nonsensical fragments of feeling. Nothing is stagnant because soon those feelings..thoughts.. conclusions are gone…replaced, contradicted, sunken. It is impossible to settle simply in one extreme. Extremes seem to be tremendous and grand, an enlightened objective, but really extremes are stunted and small, limiting and rigid.

Mountains are extremists. For a moment, all is still.

Then, the wind blows snow from mountain side to mountain side, and a silent wave smashes loudly against the shore. I suppose all is bothered.

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I was stuck in a loop of deep confusion about whether or not I liked someone new. We were in the mountains. For a second, they were everything. I saw it all. It was decided. I was very much into them. 

Soon, all was lost. It wasn’t even something they said, or something they did, but there was a mannerism. A mannerism that I knew I would never get past. Then there was nothing. No spark left when our eyes met, no flutter or rush when they entered the room. It was decided once again. 

They took off their shirt. All of “the ick” that had just spun through me hours before, became one of the many past thoughts and conclusions that inevitably sink. Floating at the surface of the hot tub were rigid abs staring back at me. I think I had a crush. 

Mountains are extremists. Maybe it was just the fact we were in the mountains that evoked my extreme stances, but real extremes don’t even exist…because they always disappear? Maybe it’s actually just exciting and comforting that thoughts and feelings can never be static, we are constantly revising them, evolving them, contradicting them. How boring it would be to like someone immediately and leave it at that. There has to be a struggle, a tumultuous adventure to developing a crush, it’s the only way to ensure the crush is real. By verging on both sides of extremes, by gliding back and forth across the mountain, we eventually find a middle route, the closest possible thing to a conclusion, to some sort of peace...for now.