What might we hear if we approached the mountain not as scenery, but as an elder?
Field Notes
A mountain has watched rivers change course, forests rise and burn, and animals arrive, disappear, and return. It knows the hunger of the wolf, but also what happens when the wolf is gone. Its knowledge is carried through relationships and consequences unfolding across a scale of time much longer than our own.
To listen to the mountain is to widen our attention—to ask not only what we want from a place, but what the whole living community needs. Perhaps an elder is simply one who has lived long enough to remember what belongs together.