Logbook: Wasilla to Barrow, entry 2: The Big Mountain and the sleeping man

We just passed Denali on the east - much farther from the mountain than in the picture I took coming home from Nuiqsut. I am in a middle seat again, jammed tight between two burly big guys, both of them asleep. Funny thing about that mountain: living near it gives one a very special feeling - almost like somehow the mountain makes you special. Yet, the mountain was here long before any of us or our nations and states. None of us has anything at all to do with its being there. It is completely indifferent to all of us. It will stand long after we have all become dust, recycled repeatedly through countless other lives; after our political institutions have collapsed and our cities vanished. Yet, it won't stand forever. And in the glimpse of meantime, it does make us feel special.