A Mountain By Another Name
A Mountain By Another Name
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
Dear Henry,
Someone scoffed yesterday, saying they couldn’t possibly live without the mountains. By mountains, she meant the Rockies, because the Rockies are, of course, the mountains.
I understand the impulse. I spent most of my life beneath their shadow, and there is nothing quite like the drama of uplift: jagged peaks, glacial valleys, water so cold it steals your breath. The Rockies announce themselves. They demand admiration.
But I disagree that they are the only mountains worth loving.
I have come to love the Ozarks, despite that long familiarity with the Rockies. Or maybe because of it.
The Ozarks are gentler. Cozier. They weren’t thrust upward in violence, but shaped slowly by erosion — worn down rather than pushed up. Instead of towering vistas, they offer hollows and folds, places where the land seems to lean in close. Living here feels less like staring at a monument and more like dwelling inside a landscape.
You don’t look up at the Ozarks so much as you look into them.
I do miss the water. In summer, Ozark streams warm and lose the sharp clarity of high-mountain runoff. There’s no shock of cold, no numbing plunge into snowmelt. That has been a small sacrifice.
But in return, there are fewer crowds. Quieter trails. Forests that feel intimate rather than grand. And there are fireflies, soft lights drifting through the dusk like punctuation marks at the end of a long day.
It turns out, mountains don’t have to be loud to matter.
About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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