Magic Mountains

You know how you wake up in the morning and stagger into the kitchen for a cuppa and when you look out the window, there’s a mountain that wasn’t there yesterday, right in your backyard, and you startle a bit and think, “Well, it’s finally happened…I have that kind of faith!”

Then your fist-pump is interrupted with Hubby rushing in behind you crying, “I can explain!”

No?

Welcome to my world, the one I graduated from two years ago.

That place where concrete mysteriously vanishes into thin air and mountains magically appear out your window.

Hubby has ways of dragging things home, and why I should be surprised that a mountain is one of them is beyond me.

If a mountain follows you home one day, no, you may not keep it.

Lead it into the Grand Canyon where it can be free.

Not my backyard.

The kids thought Christmas had come in July and the gophers were ecstatic, but the neighbors weren’t quite sure what to make of it all.

Hubby got somebody to grade it down to flatness with a tractor.

It happened three more times before Hubby decided that our property was officially two acres larger than when we bought it.

Only it was layered, like a bean dip.

From then on, we all kept a wary eye out our windows.

You couldn’t take for granted what you would see on any given day.

Which brings me to the utter irony of our new house.

Now when I wake up in the morning and stagger into the kitchen for a cuppa and look out the window, I see a large and quite permanent mountain in our backyard.

This mountain casts a shadow over our house – a fact that was not disclosed during escrow – a fact that screams, “Somebody bring me a tractor!” every day at 5.

I can get this kind of action in Alaska. This is So Cal. I need my photosynthesis therapy.

And I am constantly surprised by what I see when I look out there.

I’ve seen so many animals on that mountain, I would not be surprised to see a rhino saunter by.

Our neighbors take it all perfectly for granted.

“You should have seen it before the Fires of ’07,” they say, “Herds like the Serengeti. Sometimes the mountain lions came by. We had a bear once.”

Now Hubby is always dragging home new running shoes.

He piles them by the front door so he can toss them on and go exploring all over the mountain he gets to keep.

I figure it gets that much flatter as he stomps about up there.

But a kayak mysteriously appeared in the garage a while ago.

Do you see this foot?

This foot is down.

This foot is graduated.

I don’t care if it was a good deal.

You are not bringing home the ocean.

Um.

Wait a minute….what was that in Matthew 21:21 again?