Mountain Story
It was late and dark in the office but the light over Mike’s table was his own private dusk. He was putting the finishing touches to the house he had worked on for the last three months, late at night, and whenever he could – for he, like any other young architect there and probably anywhere – had his own special project to finish when not fixing, improving, or doing the minor details of his boss’s design. And now, from the sketches at his side that were full of penciled lines, some darker, some lighter, going over or around the same place, emerged, on the other cleaner and larger paper in from of him, the vision only previously known to his own world. He picked the drawing up, glanced at it, squinted at it. It was done. He rolled the paper carefully, slid it in its tube, and walked away through the empty desks, past the quiet and dim reception desk, out of the office, triumphantly.
On his drive home, he thought about the last three months: a roller coaster of success after moving from the East Coast, out of an apartment building in that mass of civilization that spreads from Baltimore to New York, into this, a small town on the plains east to the Rocky Mountains. When he had arrived at Denver International Airport, he had been agazed. Unlike the dense trees and twisting roads he had seen all of his life, there had been endless and empty plains, rugged mountains, and an enormous sky that spread from one horizon to the other. And a horizon, which for the first time in his life, ended in a clear line at the edge of the earth.
Now in his room, still in high spirits, he lay in bed and looked at the biggest reasons why he was here. It was a poster of the X-Men comic book hero, Wolverine. In Mike’s young impressionable imagination, Wolverine had pursued his enemy through the mountains; his footprints entering the snow like speers; his focus like a predator's; all the while aware of the wind, the ice, the clouds and the mixed scent of the pine trees and his foe’s. Mike had wished to transport himself to the mountains to feel the wilderness just as keenly. Unable to do this, he had resorted to draw Wolverine in many different adventures in the wild. This had led to his ability with the pencil, his passion for drawing, and ultimately, to his decision to become an architect.
Before going to bed that night, he shifted his gaze to the tube containing his newly finished personal project, a building, and felt anxious to see it one last time. After all, he was to turn it in for peer review tomorrow. He wanted to make sure there was nothing else to improve.
Out it came, and there it was, a house made mostly of ninety degree angles and perfect circles, heavily influenced by the school of modernism prominent in the place Mike had grown up in. But unlike this school, born at the time of the industrial dream, when buildings aspired to be a part of the bigger machine, and therefore valued efficiency over beauty, his drawing, although efficient, had an unassuming symmetry and roundness that made it very pleasing to the eye, fixing the unusual serial like, and sometimes strangeness, of the look from the architects of the modernist school. His building was compact, unsuperflous, and seemed to hover above the white paper. It was like a beautiful spacecraft. He rolled it and put it back in the tube, satisfied.
The next few days at work were tedious, correcting a small mistake on several prints of a plan. Inevitably, while he waited for the computer to calculate new measures, Mike doodled on a piece of paper and thought about his own drawing, rarely looking out of the inch and a half thick window from which the plains could be seen to the south and the mountains to the west. It was a Thursday and on a Saturday evening he was to meet with other young architects to workshop his new drawing.
A time for new beginnings, spring, would arrive in a couple of weeks. And although the grass was still dead and straw-like, precoscious buds grew on the few trees that were not pines. Mike drove to the meeting unaware of this, just as he had been unaware of the receding winter, which had been less cold, less wet, less dark, and thanks to the altitude, had not had those ugly mounts of snow that accumulated in the east coast.
Mike arrived to the house where the workshop took place. Inside, his peer criticizers sat on couches around a low long table. They were all aspiring professionals, like him, whose main objective was to have their work seen, discussed, reviewed, and accepted. Mike felt glad here, it had taken him months to find a group in which he felt at par. After some polite small talk, they went straight to business.
A rather heavy set man with a large flat forehead and black rimmed glasses spoke first:
“Well, you have done it again Mike. I can’t find anything wrong with this house.” He said to him and everybody.
Mike was abashed but then calmed down. He knew his criticizer well. He was a man of rules whose designs followed the recommended textbook proportions--what was known to work. Mike always followed the "rules"; hence, he now began to understand that this man would always like his designs.
Another young architect, this one with welcoming eyes and affable manner, spoke next.
“Yeah, how about making something we can have a workshop about,” he said comically and continued to speak:
“Although, if I may. This is the second piece you bring, so I think I feel comfortable enough to tell you this.” He rubbed his chin and smiled: “How about taking some risks. How about making something extravagant, edging on the unnecessary. Dump the symmetry, dump the efficiency, the perfectionism, and see what happens!”
Mike understood this but did not take it to heart. He liked buildings that were well put together, symmetrical yet not boring, it was his style.
There was only one last person that had not spoken. He seemed the most thoughtful. He had black hair tied in a pony tail and slanting black eyes and nose. He looked like a falcon, and he seemed to be seeing something no one else had. He picked up Mike’s drawing almost carelessly from the table, gave it one last glance, put it back stoically, and spoke:
“This building is perfect within itself but it’s too involved in itself to blend in any kind of environment.” He then waited. “This house belongs in a museum only.”
Mike’s mind raced. He imagined his house in the desert, the forest, the mountains, the plains, next to the river, by the sea, on a canyon, and many other places. As he brainstormed, his body tightened. The criticism was absolutely correct; his house did not belong anywhere but in a museum. This building represented Mike’s architectural powers thus far. He left the workshop devastated.
On Monday, the weather changed. The locals called it spring storm and Mike did not understand it. Mike drove to work slowly, it was cold and the roads were icy. Mike drove crouched up on his steering wheel, his car not warmed up yet. The comment at the workshop had depressed him all throughout the weekend. He looked through his side window; the white plains diminishing in the distance with the falling snow. But the window was fogged, making the view gloomier, like his mood.
He felt safe when he saw his imposing office, or “The Juggernaut” as his co-workers had coined it: dark and massive, with vertical windows, it stood in its equally disproportional parking lot conquering the plains like a brute. He parked his car and walked quickly through the cold and snow to the inside of the colossal building, glad to have something firm under his feet and feeling warmer and more protected inside its thick walls.
The elevator bell rang and the doors opened directly to the work room. Rows of large rectangular tables were being filled by other architects; slowly they settled about with their cups of coffee, shuffling papers, adjusting apparatus; the sounds resonating in the spacious room. For if every architect showed up to work, the place would only be half empty: it had been build to accommodate an army of architects that could produce plans by the thousands.
Today his assignment was more interesting than the last couple of days, but he did not care. He thought about his own design, his house, its inexcusable and important fault; its disconnection to its surroundings. He tried to forget about it and do some work. It was useless; an hour later, he had the drawing of his house next to his work assignment and could not concentrate on either of these. In an attempt to clear his head, he gazed out of the thick window next to his desk, out from the juggernaut, and thought:
“These plains… this flat earth extending as far as the eye can see, so far out that the curvature of the earth becomes visible. It fills me with anxiety. These plains remind me of those dreams where the dreamer runs and runs as fast as he or she can, but doesn’t get anywhere (Then Mike looked up sheepishly). And the enormous sky, which because of the plains, expands from one horizon to the other, a perfect half circle, is like the church of a strange and intrusive religion.” He then rested his eyes on the mountains: at that impenetrable fortress that his favorite superhero had inhabited and that his family and friends had told him was the main attraction in this part of the country. Mike had not taken the time to observe them seriously since he had arrived. The mountains seemed more appealing that the plains; at least, less exposed, more cuddled up. There was nothing on the plains.
Mike shook his head and looked back at the two papers on his table. Next to his pencil holding hand, on the margins of his house, was a drawing of Wolverine. As in a trance, he had drawn the comic book hero’s pointy ears, bushy sideburns, and animal like nose. This had been the character that he had championed for his ruggedness, his keen animal senses, his connection to nature and his love of the wilderness. Then he thought about this and his house. Something was not right and he thought he knew what.
That night after work, he went out to the balcony of his apartment for the first time. It was crisp and cold but he had on a warm jacket. He observed the moonlight lit scenery; the different shades of grey which painted the crevices of the mountains, the grassy part of the plains that looked like grey wolfs’ furs, the star filled night that encompassed it all.
He went to the balcony the next night as well. This time, he thought about the winds that blew from the plains to the mountains, how these had shaped the foothills, how the grass was brushed by the wind. He slept on his balcony the following night, but before falling sleep he saw images of Wolverine running through the mountains. Mike felt thankful. He woke up the next day knowing what was wrong with his whole approach to architecture.
Two weeks later, Mike drove trough rocky cliffs, tunnels, and on dirt roads to a distant hike. There he got off the car and walked on an almost indistinguishable path through trees, tree branches, creeks, smells of fresh earth, sounds of hurrying animals and birds, some snow and some ice, until he got high up to a lake that reflected the blue sky and the surrounding snow capped summits. He stood up on top of a large rock, breathed deeply, retrieved one of his favorite Wolverine comic books from his backpack, and read it emotively, loudly, and clearly. His voice left him and mingled through the trees. He hoped for Wolverine to escape the frames of the comic book and make his way into nature.
It was late and dark in the office but the light over Mike’s table was his own private dusk. He was putting the finishing touches to the house he had worked on for the last three months, late at night, and whenever he could – for he, like any other young architect there and probably anywhere – had his own special project to finish when not fixing, improving, or doing the minor details of his boss’s design. And now, from the sketches at his side that were full of penciled lines, some darker, some lighter, going over or around the same place, emerged, on the other cleaner and larger paper in from of him, the vision only previously known to his own world. He picked the drawing up, glanced at it, squinted at it. It was done. He rolled the paper carefully, slid it in its tube, and walked away through the empty desks, past the quiet and dim reception desk, out of the office, triumphantly.
On his drive home, he thought about the last three months: a roller coaster of success after moving from the East Coast, out of an apartment building in that mass of civilization that spreads from Baltimore to New York, into this, a small town on the plains east to the Rocky Mountains. When he had arrived at Denver International Airport, he had been agazed. Unlike the dense trees and twisting roads he had seen all of his life, there had been endless and empty plains, rugged mountains, and an enormous sky that spread from one horizon to the other. And a horizon, which for the first time in his life, ended in a clear line at the edge of the earth.
Now in his room, still in high spirits, he lay in bed and looked at the biggest reasons why he was here. It was a poster of the X-Men comic book hero, Wolverine. In Mike’s young impressionable imagination, Wolverine had pursued his enemy through the mountains; his footprints entering the snow like speers; his focus like a predator's; all the while aware of the wind, the ice, the clouds and the mixed scent of the pine trees and his foe’s. Mike had wished to transport himself to the mountains to feel the wilderness just as keenly. Unable to do this, he had resorted to draw Wolverine in many different adventures in the wild. This had led to his ability with the pencil, his passion for drawing, and ultimately, to his decision to become an architect.
Before going to bed that night, he shifted his gaze to the tube containing his newly finished personal project, a building, and felt anxious to see it one last time. After all, he was to turn it in for peer review tomorrow. He wanted to make sure there was nothing else to improve.
Out it came, and there it was, a house made mostly of ninety degree angles and perfect circles, heavily influenced by the school of modernism prominent in the place Mike had grown up in. But unlike this school, born at the time of the industrial dream, when buildings aspired to be a part of the bigger machine, and therefore valued efficiency over beauty, his drawing, although efficient, had an unassuming symmetry and roundness that made it very pleasing to the eye, fixing the unusual serial like, and sometimes strangeness, of the look from the architects of the modernist school. His building was compact, unsuperflous, and seemed to hover above the white paper. It was like a beautiful spacecraft. He rolled it and put it back in the tube, satisfied.
The next few days at work were tedious, correcting a small mistake on several prints of a plan. Inevitably, while he waited for the computer to calculate new measures, Mike doodled on a piece of paper and thought about his own drawing, rarely looking out of the inch and a half thick window from which the plains could be seen to the south and the mountains to the west. It was a Thursday and on a Saturday evening he was to meet with other young architects to workshop his new drawing.
A time for new beginnings, spring, would arrive in a couple of weeks. And although the grass was still dead and straw-like, precoscious buds grew on the few trees that were not pines. Mike drove to the meeting unaware of this, just as he had been unaware of the receding winter, which had been less cold, less wet, less dark, and thanks to the altitude, had not had those ugly mounts of snow that accumulated in the east coast.
Mike arrived to the house where the workshop took place. Inside, his peer criticizers sat on couches around a low long table. They were all aspiring professionals, like him, whose main objective was to have their work seen, discussed, reviewed, and accepted. Mike felt glad here, it had taken him months to find a group in which he felt at par. After some polite small talk, they went straight to business.
A rather heavy set man with a large flat forehead and black rimmed glasses spoke first:
“Well, you have done it again Mike. I can’t find anything wrong with this house.” He said to him and everybody.
Mike was abashed but then calmed down. He knew his criticizer well. He was a man of rules whose designs followed the recommended textbook proportions--what was known to work. Mike always followed the "rules"; hence, he now began to understand that this man would always like his designs.
Another young architect, this one with welcoming eyes and affable manner, spoke next.
“Yeah, how about making something we can have a workshop about,” he said comically and continued to speak:
“Although, if I may. This is the second piece you bring, so I think I feel comfortable enough to tell you this.” He rubbed his chin and smiled: “How about taking some risks. How about making something extravagant, edging on the unnecessary. Dump the symmetry, dump the efficiency, the perfectionism, and see what happens!”
Mike understood this but did not take it to heart. He liked buildings that were well put together, symmetrical yet not boring, it was his style.
There was only one last person that had not spoken. He seemed the most thoughtful. He had black hair tied in a pony tail and slanting black eyes and nose. He looked like a falcon, and he seemed to be seeing something no one else had. He picked up Mike’s drawing almost carelessly from the table, gave it one last glance, put it back stoically, and spoke:
“This building is perfect within itself but it’s too involved in itself to blend in any kind of environment.” He then waited. “This house belongs in a museum only.”
Mike’s mind raced. He imagined his house in the desert, the forest, the mountains, the plains, next to the river, by the sea, on a canyon, and many other places. As he brainstormed, his body tightened. The criticism was absolutely correct; his house did not belong anywhere but in a museum. This building represented Mike’s architectural powers thus far. He left the workshop devastated.
On Monday, the weather changed. The locals called it spring storm and Mike did not understand it. Mike drove to work slowly, it was cold and the roads were icy. Mike drove crouched up on his steering wheel, his car not warmed up yet. The comment at the workshop had depressed him all throughout the weekend. He looked through his side window; the white plains diminishing in the distance with the falling snow. But the window was fogged, making the view gloomier, like his mood.
He felt safe when he saw his imposing office, or “The Juggernaut” as his co-workers had coined it: dark and massive, with vertical windows, it stood in its equally disproportional parking lot conquering the plains like a brute. He parked his car and walked quickly through the cold and snow to the inside of the colossal building, glad to have something firm under his feet and feeling warmer and more protected inside its thick walls.
The elevator bell rang and the doors opened directly to the work room. Rows of large rectangular tables were being filled by other architects; slowly they settled about with their cups of coffee, shuffling papers, adjusting apparatus; the sounds resonating in the spacious room. For if every architect showed up to work, the place would only be half empty: it had been build to accommodate an army of architects that could produce plans by the thousands.
Today his assignment was more interesting than the last couple of days, but he did not care. He thought about his own design, his house, its inexcusable and important fault; its disconnection to its surroundings. He tried to forget about it and do some work. It was useless; an hour later, he had the drawing of his house next to his work assignment and could not concentrate on either of these. In an attempt to clear his head, he gazed out of the thick window next to his desk, out from the juggernaut, and thought:
“These plains… this flat earth extending as far as the eye can see, so far out that the curvature of the earth becomes visible. It fills me with anxiety. These plains remind me of those dreams where the dreamer runs and runs as fast as he or she can, but doesn’t get anywhere (Then Mike looked up sheepishly). And the enormous sky, which because of the plains, expands from one horizon to the other, a perfect half circle, is like the church of a strange and intrusive religion.” He then rested his eyes on the mountains: at that impenetrable fortress that his favorite superhero had inhabited and that his family and friends had told him was the main attraction in this part of the country. Mike had not taken the time to observe them seriously since he had arrived. The mountains seemed more appealing that the plains; at least, less exposed, more cuddled up. There was nothing on the plains.
Mike shook his head and looked back at the two papers on his table. Next to his pencil holding hand, on the margins of his house, was a drawing of Wolverine. As in a trance, he had drawn the comic book hero’s pointy ears, bushy sideburns, and animal like nose. This had been the character that he had championed for his ruggedness, his keen animal senses, his connection to nature and his love of the wilderness. Then he thought about this and his house. Something was not right and he thought he knew what.
That night after work, he went out to the balcony of his apartment for the first time. It was crisp and cold but he had on a warm jacket. He observed the moonlight lit scenery; the different shades of grey which painted the crevices of the mountains, the grassy part of the plains that looked like grey wolfs’ furs, the star filled night that encompassed it all.
He went to the balcony the next night as well. This time, he thought about the winds that blew from the plains to the mountains, how these had shaped the foothills, how the grass was brushed by the wind. He slept on his balcony the following night, but before falling sleep he saw images of Wolverine running through the mountains. Mike felt thankful. He woke up the next day knowing what was wrong with his whole approach to architecture.
Two weeks later, Mike drove trough rocky cliffs, tunnels, and on dirt roads to a distant hike. There he got off the car and walked on an almost indistinguishable path through trees, tree branches, creeks, smells of fresh earth, sounds of hurrying animals and birds, some snow and some ice, until he got high up to a lake that reflected the blue sky and the surrounding snow capped summits. He stood up on top of a large rock, breathed deeply, retrieved one of his favorite Wolverine comic books from his backpack, and read it emotively, loudly, and clearly. His voice left him and mingled through the trees. He hoped for Wolverine to escape the frames of the comic book and make his way into nature.