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Mountain People

By Michael Wolcott

Let's start with this: mountain people do not curse the weather. They have slept out in the rain and know that the weather will change. They know that just to be around-under any sort of sky - is good luck enough.

Mountain people consider beauty a necessity, so they live near vertical terrain: in Flagstaff or Durango or Moab; in Jackson or Bluff; or Bisbee; in Silver City, Telluride, or in Haines, Alaska.

With mountain people it's not the address that matters most, though. It's more about an orientation (toward beauty) or about what could be called "attitude": mountain people are not impressed by shiny cars, botoxed smiles, or the latest lies delivered from Washington. They know that the best things in life are not things.

Mountain people clearly know what they like. They prefer books to TV, banjos to golf clubs, and right now to "sometime in the future." They have affinities for cast-iron skillets, steel-grey skies, and bulletproof prose.

Mountain people are sentimental �? their cabins are full of dusty feathers, "special" rocks, and old love letters. (Mountain people still write letters occasionally-the old-fashioned kind that you can hold in your paw, the kind with stamps on the outside and the recognizable beauty of a friend's handwriting tucked within.)

They may also write poems �? mostly bad ones, but occasionally a poem so brilliant you will need to look away. When you do, there will probably be a mountain in your mind's eye, a mountain that has taught you something you could not have learned any other way.

Mountain people are practical �? the cabin will contain socket wrenches and at least one roll of duct tape. It will have a window that opens onto something beautiful.

Mountain people are not sure what they'll be when they grow up, though it will certainly not be president. They are less likely than flatlanders to have health insurance, retirement plans and annuities (what IS an annuity, anyway?). If they have children, mountain people are pretty sure their children will "be OK." Whatever that means.

Mountain people are frugal. Some leave the baggage tags on their backpacks from one Greyhound trip to the next, even if it's two years later, because they don't want to waste the paper. Mountain people are spendthrifts. They will park their scruffy trucks in the casino lot, walk in, and lose all they have. But along the way they will out-tip the high rollers. The panhandler who asks for a buck might get a twenty. Hey, everybody needs a good day once in awhile.

According to some, mountain people can laugh a bit too loudly. I have seen them laughing with tears in their eyes, saying things like "Sure I'm depressed, but I don't let it get me down" or "I'm only happy when I'm miserable."

When mountain people are in trouble, they call other mountain people. It may be two in morning. They may say "Nothing needs to be fixed. I just need to hear somebody on the other end of the line."

A mountain person will stay on the other end of the line. If asked, a mountain person will quite literally give you the shirt off his back. If you really need a shirt, you probably won't have to ask.

My friends are mostly mountain people, though some may have never scaled an actual mountain. (As the great Yosemite climber Doug Robinson once put it, in true mountaineering no climbing is required.)

My friends are mountain people because they know the mountains. They have walked the drainages and maybe skied or snow-shoed the slopes. Mountain people occasionally testify in court because mountains cannot speak in court for themselves.

People who read Inside/Outside Southwest magazine might be mountain people, or they might not. Some of them at least want to be mountain people, which is a start. Wannabe isn't a dirty word, not if you wannabe righteous.

But to succeed, a wannabe will have to give up some things. Mountain people by necessity go light. Mountains are problematic for those who want security and certainty, because the only certainties a mountain will offer are gravity and erosion, heart-piercing storms and rose-colored visions.

Mountain people may also happen to be desert people, or even river people. That's because mountain people know that deserts and rivers and mountains are three faces of the same god. They know this to be true, even if there is no god.