Hot, Flat, Crowded

This was originally written for a proposed environmental writing contest, but nothing came of the contest. So, a tad bit of recycling occurs!

Hot, flat, and crowded. The conditions describe nightmares. To be away from the majesty of mountains rising in ancient protectiveness, raising the sky to unimaginable heights, and offering opportunities to do as the bear did and see what lies beyond. Cold sweeps down from old snowfields. The great storm clouds gather above peaks and slide threateningly down the slopes to the land below. The solitude of high places. All this, mountains mean to me. To leave them and drop down, down to the hot, flat crowded places, I feel weight congeal on my heart, my soul, my shoulders.

Heat pounds down relentlessly and radiates up from the pavement. It shimmers across sidewalks and rises in waves from the exhaust pipes of idling cars. The heat convects through shoes, turning toes into soggy slabs of misery, rubbed raw by friction. Heat clings clothing to bodies as sweat runs in ever-increasing rivulets. Odor rises in the heat, almost visible in its miasma.  Heat wraps around the head and crushes, headache building with rising temperatures. Stars, born of heat, die in the excess of heat and fade to mere imaginings in the fogged sky.

Flat, nothing on the horizon to give scale; nothing to stop the winds from blowing from far away places. Flat with nothing to slow or stop the weather that gathers in a great pool above the land and dips down in terrifying ferocity. Flat with no incentive to climb higher. Flat with no siren song beckoning from over the next rise or leading up to the silence of high places. No granite arms held in silent welcome wait in flat places.

Crowds pressing in, breathing the same air over and over, oxygen vanishing with each successive breath until only the irrationality of carbon dioxide excess remains as humans, crowded like rats in a psych experiment, react with violence. Humidity wraps around, each droplet sweated by the person ahead, beside, behind. Crowds, where junior high mentality rules. Crowds, where there is no relief except to lock doors and hearts away from others. Crowds, where you are not one but only one of many.

I run from the hot, the flat and the crowds, up to the high lonely places where the air is bright and the sky is in its glory. Up where a bird song is part of the view and not an oddity to be ignored. Up where the heart is one but can be one of many without losing the singularity that makes it unique. But now the loneliness, the clarity and the oneness of mountains are challenged by those who bring with them the aura and stench of flat, hot and crowded. It is something to rage against, to fight our way becoming their way and losing ourselves in crowded, flat attitudes and the heat of pressing humanity.