It's true that it's almost impossible to say anything new about these landscapes. The trees are green, the lakes are blue, the mountains are high. You've seen the pictures, watched the movies, hiked these peaks or flown over top of them or seen them in Google Maps' satellite view. There really aren't any surprises here. Sunlight and blue skies are lovely, stormy cloud masses are imposing, riding by a sawmill really spoils the view.
You've seen it all before, but that doesn't mean you stop looking. The views are unsurprising but - somehow - still astonishing. It's a reminder that novelty does not run the world. Seeing some things once just isn't enough; you can't check a beautiful view off your bucket list.
The shaking, whirring mechanism of the train propels us forward in time, leaving monotony on the tracks behind us, and we get sucked into a pattern of endless appreciation that doesn't feel repetitive. I think I could run this route on a loop and never get bored. I've seen the crew gaze out at the mountain range with the same slack-faced calm as the rest of us.
Why are we fascinated by these well-known views? Is this E.O. Wilson's biophilia? I don't know. All I know is that it's kind of irrelevant that there's nothing new to say about these mountains. After all, it's not something new we're chasing with our eager gazing - it's something very, very old. And it may not be novel, but that doesn't mean it's always the same.
The same green, the same blue, the same tall peaks, same white clouds, yes. But the light changes as the sun sets lower. The rolling range fades away into temporary flatlands and then an ice-topped volcanic mountain rises from the earth. It's the same view, but everytime you look, it seems to have gained a shadow or lost a curve. Who needs a new horizon when the old one is so teasingly out of reach, so temptingly shifting?
Everyone can use some mountain time.
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