I’ve been home from Colorado for a couple of weeks now, and I still find myself thinking about mountains.
For much of my visit, I felt oddly disoriented. East and west were little more than educated guesses; north and south had lost their certainty. Here, in Skagit County, Mount Baker is north. The Skagit River runs east to west (mostly), and the big waters of the Salish Sea—the Way Beyond—lie to the west. We have our natural landmarks by which to calibrate our internal compasses.
What I realized while in Colorado is that it is surprisingly difficult to see the mountains when you’re standing among them. It’s a forest-for-the-trees sort of conundrum. When mountains surround you, they cease to be a feature on the horizon; they become the landscape itself. Their scale is so immense that they disappear into familiarity.
There were mornings when the air felt impossibly thin, as though every breath carried just a little less of the world than I was accustomed to. The sky seemed too large to belong to a single place, stretching in every direction with an infinite openness. We journeyed above the tree line, where forests simply stopped, surrendering to wind, stone, and patches of stubborn snow. Red stone rose from the earth like the exposed bones of an ancient continent. It was beautiful in a way that resisted description—so immense that, paradoxically, it almost became invisible.
Only from a distance do mountains reveal their contours. Sometimes obscured by summer haze, but on clear days, far beyond Denver, a jagged line of snow-capped peaks rose above the western horizon—the Rocky Mountains. Julie had to point them out to me. She had come from Ohio, yet somehow seemed to know her bearings without hesitation. She smiled, pointed toward the distant peaks, and said simply, “That’s west.” I appreciated the instruction because it helped me find my bearings, at least a little.
Only after returning home did I realize the irony. I had spent much of the trip quietly dismissing the mountains because I couldn’t seem to see them. They had never been absent. They had simply been too vast to fit inside the way I was accustomed to looking. Since coming home, I’ve found myself thinking less about the mountains themselves and more about the landscape they create—and what that landscape has to teach.
Somewhere among those distant snowy peaks, beyond alpine meadows, red rock outcroppings, and scenic overlooks, runs the Continental Divide, one of the most consequential geographic features in North America. Snow and rain falling on one side eventually find their way to the Pacific Ocean. Water landing on the other side begins a journey toward the Atlantic. A few feet can determine the course of an entire river.
The Continental Divide is, in every sense, a boundary. Yet it doesn’t fracture the landscape; it gives shape to it. Nature seems entirely at peace with this distinction. The mountains do not insist that all water flow in the same direction. They simply create form and allow each drop to follow its course. Streams diverge, rivers separate, and watersheds develop their own identities. Yet no river spends its energy condemning another river for heading toward a different ocean.
As I reflected on this geographic division, I found myself thinking about the divisions that define our human landscape: political divisions, religious divisions, cultural divisions, social divisions. Everywhere we seem to be drawing lines and then treating those lines as evidence that we no longer belong to one another.
The larger landscape offers a different example. A healthy forest does not consist of a single species. Diversity is not a flaw in the system; it is the system. Cedars and aspens, wildflowers and fungi, insects and birds all occupy different niches while contributing to the health of the whole. The same is true of water. Though rivers may travel different paths, they remain participants in the same cycle. Snow becomes stream, stream becomes river, river becomes ocean, ocean becomes cloud, and the cycle begins again. Each drop of water belongs to something larger than its individual journey. I wonder what might happen if we remembered the same.
We become so immersed in our differences that we lose sight of the larger landscape that contains them. Like someone standing in the middle of a mountain range, we focus on the nearest rise and lose sight of the range itself. The things that connect us become difficult to see precisely because they are always there: our shared humanity, our dependence upon one another, our common hopes for safety, meaning, belonging, and love. Like the mountains, the scale of those connections is so immense that they disappear into familiarity, and we lose our bearings.
The Rocky Mountains are old. Long before our political parties, our social movements, our ideologies, and our arguments, they were already shaping weather patterns, directing rivers, and defining watersheds. Standing near those ancient formations—watching red stone vibrate in the mid-day glare or looking out across valleys carved over unimaginable spans of time—it becomes impossible not to feel the compression of human history. They have watched glaciers advance and retreat. They have witnessed forests rise and fall. They have endured droughts, floods, fires, and ice ages. Against the backdrop of geological time, much of our contemporary outrage begins to look remarkably temporary.
While we hurry from one controversy to the next, the mountains continue their slow work. They are not concerned with who is winning today’s debate or losing a case in court. They understand what we humans often forget: most conflicts eventually fade, while the consequences of how we treat one another endure.
During my time in Colorado, the mountains were not the only landscape I found myself observing. I had come to Denver for a birthday celebration with Dave’s family, and somewhere between shared meals, conversations, and time spent together, another kind of landscape revealed itself. Looking back, I realize that the lesson I found in the mountains was already being lived out around the family table.
I think back to that moment when Julie pointed toward the Rockies and quietly helped me find west. At the time, I admired her sense of direction. Now I realize she and the rest of Dave’s family were helping me find another kind of orientation as well.
Like most families, they do not all share the same beliefs. Their political views vary. Their religious convictions differ. Their opinions about the world are not always aligned. Yet they remain family. They gather around tables, celebrate milestones, show up during hardship, and grieve losses together. They laugh together more often than they argue. They have figured out that relationship matters more than agreement. Their differences are real. They are not ignored, but neither are they allowed to become fractures. They see beyond the nearest disagreement to the larger landscape of belonging.
Why does this become so difficult when we move beyond the boundaries of our own homes? Why do we expect millions of strangers to agree when no healthy family ever does? Why do we treat disagreement as proof that someone no longer belongs?
Perhaps the Continental Divide offers a different way of thinking. It creates distinction without hostility.
The mountains separate watersheds while remaining part of the same landscape. Rivers travel different routes while participating in the same cycle. Difference exists without contempt. Diversity exists without division.
While I was simply trying to figure out which direction I was facing, I think that is what the mountains had to teach me on this trip. Not that differences should disappear, and not that everyone should think alike, but that we might learn to hold our differences the way nature does: firmly enough to create shape, gently enough to remain connected.
It turns out the divide is not the problem. Losing sight of the larger landscape is.
Both the mountains and loving families have been teaching that lesson for generations. Perhaps that is the larger landscape we keep forgetting—the one spacious enough to hold rivers flowing in opposite directions, forests strengthened by diversity, mountains that give shape without hostility, and families who choose relationship over agreement. Perhaps it has always been large enough to hold all of us.