A mountain is an old giant happy to share its perspective with anyone who will rest a while on its shoulder.
From A World Worth Saving, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
Flew farther north than I meant to today, and ended up on a rock shelf near the top of the ridge, out of wind and out of ideas. For years I thought the appeal of a high place was that you had gotten there, that the climb was the whole of it. But there were two hikers on the shelf below me who had plainly given up on the summit, and they sat with their boots off and their backs against the stone and looked out at the valley for the better part of an hour, and they saw everything I saw. A mountain is an old giant happy to share its perspective with anyone who will rest a while on its shoulder. It does not check who finished. I had the advantage of wings and arrived in nine minutes, and I am not sure the view was worth as much to me.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- The feet in warm sand restore a flagging spirit like no salve or caring hand.
- Breathe in the sea and keep its rhythm in your heart.
- A bee that starts building a hive won’t work long alone.
- It is hard to look at the stars and worry about what people think of you.
- Seek your counsel in the night sky.
- A garden needs two forms of sunshine: the kind that comes from the sun and the kind that comes from mouths with upturned corners.