There is something reassuring about a mountain . We have them as a backdrop to the neighborhood , just up the street .
I often watch the shadows change the hues up there on the hillsides as clouds pass slowly overhead and also on cloudless days as the sun moves along on its daily pilgrimage to the sea . The mountain changes constantly from a deep shade of blue , some might say purple , to a cardboard -box brown and then , sometimes , to a delicate embroidery of white . Sometimes , on the higher peaks , there sits a thin blanket of white when snow levels fall . Mount Baldy is the star snow-gatherer in the area .
But our local mountains are not the exhibitionists that some other mountains are . Go to Zion , for example , and look at the massive rock formations ostentatiously called ” the patriarchs “.
Or gaze up at Sugarloaf from the valley in Yosemite . These are show-off mountains . These formations have a right to show off , of course . They are spectacular . 
Our mountains are much more sedate , with an unpretentious dignity .
One time long ago an older couple from Ohio came in to Redman Van and Storage in Santa Monica while I was working there . They had moved from Ohio and their belongings were waiting for them in the warehouse . They had driven from Ohio by way of Seattle . They had come down all the way to Santa Monica along the coast highway .
” Four days of mountain and ocean ,” the woman complained .” That’s all you have here ,” she whined , ” mountains and ocean .” She was disgusted and exhausted from the long drive on the winding Highway 1 . ” We should have stayed in Ohio . We had everything there !”
I said , ” Except mountains and ocean . ” 
itkindofgotawayfromyou 
