Читать книгу The Ashokan Way - Gail Straub - Страница 11

Walking on this bright, crisp Thanksgiving Day, I can see High Point’s every contour, her gentle hollows and dales along with her stark ridges and plateaus. The soft valleys take my eyes deep into the landscape, while the sharp edges draw my sight back out to the sky. As the clear morning light amplifies the rhythmic inward and outward movement of my gaze, I have the sensation that the entire landmass could be likened to a giant rib cage, with the inner contraction followed by a natural outward expansion. On days when I am very still, I can feel this: the mountain breathing in and breathing out. And with all the leaves gone, the naked outline, the very bone structure of High Point is pronounced. Moving further east, I see the boney formation of the ridges narrowing like a great hand reaching upward toward the summit and once again I have the distinct experience of this mountain as a live being. A dominant influence in my life, this living mountain is my familiar.

Spiritual traditions from all over the world refer to sacred mountains that shape a person’s longings and aspirations. Looking back over more than three decades of my life, this is precisely the role that High Point has played. The first time I walked into the small A-frame house that David and I initially rented and eventually owned, I was shocked by the presence of High Point. The mountain loomed so large and so close that I felt like it lived in my tiny kitchen. From that moment of acquaintance in June 1981, the mountain’s outline and contours have been omnipresent in my life. And on certain days I still feel like my small home—perched on a bluestone ridge overlooking the reservoir—is, in fact, an extension of the mountain itself.

During those first weeks in our house, David and I spent hours and hours working at our kitchen table. With yellow legal pads and pens, we alternately planned our wedding and designed the workshop that would lead to our life’s work. Back then we were still getting used to the fact that every time we looked up from our work, the imposing presence of a mountain met our gaze. A few months later on a windy October day, we were married in our living room, with High Point as our witness.

Just weeks after we moved to our home, David and I asked the Woodstock artist Joan Elliot to draw a logo for our new business. Joan sat on our upper deck and drew a simple sketch of High Point and the bridge near its base that crosses over the Ashokan Reservoir. For more than three decades that image has been the visual symbol for all the work we have done not only in our small corner of the Hudson Valley, but across North America and in Europe, Asia, Africa, India, and the Middle East. Later, when we started our small indie press, we called it High Point, and the impression stamped on all our publications is the unmistakable outline of the mountain that has been such a meaningful presence in our lives. The iconic image of High Point has come to represent our marriage and our creative partnership as well as our individual work and writings. And each and every day the mountain itself continues to inspire us to give our best to life. It continues to offer solace and to fortify us in difficult times.

So here I am on this day of giving thanks, walking along the familiar shores of the Ashokan Reservoir with my mountain watching me. Today her imposing body stretches out like an immoveable mass of ancient rock formation, solid and strong. But on other days my silent observer becomes a moving river, fluid and gentle. My eyes trace the familiar outline of this beloved mountain, aware that both its solidity and fluidity have so much to teach me, and on this day of thanksgiving, I pause to offer abundant gratitude for its existence in my life.

I used to wonder, as one might with certain close friends, whether I chose High Point as my familiar or if she chose me. Now, after decades of full and fruitful kinship, I feel that we have mutually chosen each other, for at its most essential, friendship is shared presence sustained over time. Surely the potent exchange that creates the lineage of any significant relationship is as mysterious with a mountain as it is with a person. And how blessed is the person who can count among their allies some aspect of the landscape. Let us be grateful then, for that river or tree, that rocky ledge or creature that witnesses our life, offering comfort and joy.