Mountains

My oxygen levels range from 98 to 99 constant nowadays, but I'm a smoker. I just get a lot of excerise. At 80-90 it may be difficult, so I'll likely go a few years prior if I'm able. When it gets too difficult I'll make my dive. It sounds fun anyway.

I remember high dives at pools and lakes and how scared I was to jump at first, then after I found out how fun they were to jump from ,I'couldnt stay of of them. I'll be a chicken I know, but once my health goes bad and it gets difficult to live comfortably, it'll make the plunge easier. I'll have fun on the way down though. If I decide to go that route. I don't like the thought of hospital beds or too much misery and i will live before I die. I want to die a happy man and make the plunge a happy happy man. Wishful thinking maybe ... I don't know yet, but I'm gonna find out.

 

I grew up staring at mountains, thinking my home was up there somewhere. And got here as quick as I could, too.

I don't know which mountains you're looking at, but where I live it's winter for half the year. A July flurry is not unusual, and everyone over 25 remembers seeing snow in August. Snow's fine if you shovel it, but the ice it becomes if you don't will break your body, so ideally you gladly shovel the stuff. Cars... don't get attached to 'em. They don't use rust-promoting salt here, but if you don't wreck on ice, you're going to find deer, elk, moose, or Angus on the windshield soon enough, and how good a driver you are has nothing to do with it. I've got a thousand dollar bumper on the front of my truck because it's cheap insurance. There are lots and lots of miles of road where you can go off the side and not be noticed until after you smell horribly dead, or even after you've stopped smelling dead -- happens all the time. Add up all of the challenges that a mountain winter brings, and you'll understand why the U-Haul people love to be here. They build an inventory by late summer, and they're all gone again by late winter.

Injuries that you forgot about decades ago will bite your ass up here, every winter. I'm only 58 and get only halfway to the coffee pot each morning before revising the to-do list that I came up with before getting out of bed. The combination of cold, dry air and low atmospheric pressure somehow makes permanent reminders out of things that were once only temporary inconveniences. I kick ass in the summer, though. Speaking of summer, at this elevation you carry a coat all year because without one you'll freeze your ass off at the Independence Day fireworks show.

Where I live, there's no Starbucks, McDonald's, Safeway, Wal-Mart... Folks routinely drive an hour and a half each way to shop. I don't, but I'm not much of a consumer. You really don't save any money by driving a long distance for a lower price, anyway, and the increased risk of death makes breaking even financially (once vehicle operation costs are considered) seem pretty pointless, if you think that far into it. Cell phone service is good in town, but two miles out in either direction it's sometimes hit and mostly miss for forty miles. You're not calling for roadside assistance -- you're hoping a local stops to help and that it's today. Breaking down late at night can bring frightening thoughts. Luckily, folks who live here know that we get by in reliance upon one another, so anyone who sees you stopped where it's not sensible to be is going to offer assistance.

Lots of rural mountain folk haul drinking water from somewhere else -- the last well I had drilled went 640' and produced only twelve gallons per minute, that it was producing at just over 200'. I paid twelve grand for four hundred feet of solid rock bore that was just leaky storage, and the clothes got muddy during the rinse cycle in the washer if we didn't interrupt the timer for a bit. A couple of years earlier I had an envy of the neighbors spring-fed cistern, but a neighbor dynamite-fracked his dry bore well and got lucky by diverting our spring. Shit happens. Oh: the river was fifty yards away, but it's solid rock between that property and the river. Our next place, fifty yards downstream, had a surface well that the pump couldn't outrun. If it's not a proven thing, it's a very iffy thing. You might be buying a tank and a trailer to haul it on even after sinking a lot of money to bore a dry hole.

Bears don't give a fuck, and if you're not in the middle of town you'll get to know that. If you want to keep chickens or rabbits, or any small livestock, you're going to lose 'em every so often even if you keep the bobcats, foxes, and so on out. If there's no mesh roof over your chicken yard, raptors and owls will love you. A six foot fence won't keep the deer out of your garden, and the rabbits will dig a foot or more to get under it. Raccoons will climb it, and wild turkeys will fly over it. Even in town, the foxes, raccoons, et cetera, are a problem. Deer hang out in my yard, and if I want to keep something that they find tasty I have to enclose it in something that their faces won't fit through. You get away with leaving the gate open precisely zero times. Coyotes will eat your pets, and ask for more. Mountain lions are usually not a problem, but a desperately weak one will hunt children, and maybe adults who seem afraid. You might have to earn the privilege of living as a keystone predator.

In my town, you hope that you don't ever need a plumber because they're here only one day every two weeks and usually booked solid in advance. I learned this recenty -- I'm now a guy with no forty-five year old galvanized pipe to worry about, but we spent eleven dry days flushing the toilet with water that we had to haul and taking our showers at a motel. Renting rather than buying doesn't mean that these kinds of problems are magically made irrelevant, it just means that someone who isn't suffering the consequences (and cares more about their dollars than your discomfort) is on the phone with those remote service providers. It's better to own. Renting or owning, you should spend weeks in any place you're thinking of settling, and spend it talking to folks, because the state agencies that you're accustomed to having around to give a fuck about you don't give a fuck about mountain towns or rural mountain dwellers. Out here, if you don't get into a specific conversation you might not know that the ambulance depends upon if they can reach you or not -- if you're out of town and your private road or long driveway isn't plowed you might die.

I could go on and on, but I won't. I just want you to know that if you're down to do-or-die money, you're better off not chasing that dream. The shit you never thought of will wipe out your finances, and the last person you want to be is that one who's trapped in an inhospitable situation.

That said, if you're a hardy soul and not down to desperate money, or so desperate that money has become barely relevant, go for it. The worst that can happen, if you survive the experience without getting badly broken, is that you go down the mountain with your tail between your legs. On the other hand, I'm happy to say that I haven't ventured into the depths below 5000' in a decade, and were it not for elderly family it would be three decades. If silly shit like snow and Ice, bears and mountain lions, and consumer inconvenience don't bother you, then maybe it's the thing to do. It was for me.

 

Depends on the mountain.

Some highland cities or towns are higher elevated than some mountains.

 

I know the views are beautiful, the hiking difficult, and the out of the way vibe phenomenal. On one hand I need to get away. On the other, I need people and social interaction. I want to grow a garden with fresh veggies and have access to a few fruit trees, but that requires time and a more permanant residence. I don't want to buy land or property, but hiking sounds nice, as does being able to stay in one spot for over a year. Mountains might afford me that much, so long as I keep elevation at a lower level.

 

if you want to meditate on top of a mountain because you think it will be romantic, you will be disappointed.
if you want to meditate on top of a mountain because you want to meditate, you will be rewarded.

 

I never mentioned meditation or romance. I think something quite the opposite. Adventure an adrenaline rush and a dive with a few flips to the tune of jump by van halen at 80 -90 years old as a way to my final destination after a life well lived. What does meditation have to do with anything?

 

adrenaline rushes i classify as romantic, unless they're unadulturated massochism.
meditation is liberation from the assumtions of others and their demands that everyone else share them.
what do adrenaline rushes reward?

 

Interesting take. Romance ... I guess we all have different views of. To me it's a nice hot shower with someone I care about. Meditation I get from writing and art and creating things. I think cooking dinner together would constitute romance, and hand washing some clothes together too. I guess I'm just a sexually romantic guy. Adrenaline rush comes with sex too when it's intensely pleasurable. Jumping off a mountain when I'm ready to die at 80 or 90 years old would be a fairly intense way to go. Even better is to get off on the way down, but at 80 or 90 I'm don't think that's feasible but I'm not that age yet so who knows?

 

Lived in Missoula,MT for 12 years....surrounded by mountains in every direction....a very neat place to live.

 

Death

It's hopeless out. I'm always the big dog odds in my favor... darkness

 

Yes I love the mountains and want very much to live beside them. I have also planned to die in such a way, if I am fortunate to be able to make that decision at the time.

 

Speaking of mountains........................

Mount Everest is closed: Coronavirus fears reach world's tallest peak as climbing permits halted

Even the world's tallest peak was no match for the spread of the new coronavirus as Nepal’s government announced Friday it was suspending climbing permits for Mount Everest.