Have you ever noticed how revisiting a beloved book can conjure ghosts? Not in the spiritual sense but in the form of potent memories. The kind that live in the grey area between a person’s head and heart. Sitting in stasis just waiting for the cue to be triggered into action. Deciding at the last minute whether to go up or down. Go to the head and induce personal scrutiny, travel to the heart and render flesh from bone. The appropriate emotional response ending either way in the ruin of a perfect Manhattan. Paper stored memories.
Leo Tolstoy published The Cossacks in 1863. I first read it in 2011 after I found a copy that was translated in the 1940's. The translation isn't the best but the sweeping and tender descriptives of the Caucasus and Georgian countryside hold up beautifully. This book calls up ghosts, of the time I was reading it, the people I knew and the season. Winter.
Winter and the snowy Olympic mountains. The passage that inspires the most emotion for me being chapter three. Olenin has been traveling for days in a sledge and cart from Moscow when he finally sees the mountains.
The mountains and the clouds appeared to him quite alike,
and he thought the special beauty of the snow peaks, of which he
had so often been told, was as much an invention as Bach's music
and the love of women, in which he did not believe. So he gave up
looking forward to seeing the mountains. But early next morning,
being awakened in his cart by the freshness of the air, he glanced
carelessly to the right. The morning was perfectly clear. Suddenly
he saw, about twenty paces away as it seemed to him at first
glance, pure white gigantic masses with delicate contours, the
distinct fantastic outlines of their summits showing sharply
against the far-off sky. When he had realized the distance between
himself and them and the sky and the whole immensity of the
mountains, and felt the infinitude of all that beauty, he became
afraid that it was but a phantasm or a dream. He gave himself a
shake to rouse himself, but the mountains were still the same.
"What's that! What is it?" he said to the driver.
"Why, the mountains," answered the Nogay driver with indifference.
"And I too have been looking at them for a long while," said
Vanyusha. "Aren't they fine? They won't believe it at home."
The delicate paragraph shown here being the turning point of his journey. So I give it as an offering to the season. Turn your eyes to the big blue mountains all around us. Think about the size of them. They lie in wait filled with massive history. Think about cold and warmth and the proper comforts of a winter in Seattle. Climb into bed with someone and read this to them. Hike out to the snow and think like a Cossack. Make some memories.
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| North Cascades, taken on my iPhone 4s. I got lucky with the light. |
