Fireheart Mountain

The gray predawn light urged me out of bed. Miss Nancy was still sleeping soundly so I quietly slipped, like an otter, into morning. The chilled bedroom air prodded me to quickly dress. I quietly plodded downstairs to practice my fire making skills and was soon feeding an armful of firewood into the maw of the kitchen stove.

A glance at the outdoor thermometer betrayed the reason the house carried a chill. Minus eighteen. I actually smiled recognizing the good old-fashioned January morning. I kind of miss those rigid Januarys of yesteryear.

The fire leaped into action trading BTUs for stout chunks of oak. I put water on to heat up for tea and sat down. As with most mornings, I glanced out the east window to assess the day. It’s a simple, but not infallible, way to forecast the weather. If I can spy the winter sun climbing out of the east, I am assured of a clear day for the time being. If there is no sun in view or if it is muddled, well the day will be overcast and perhaps that would mean some snow.

To my sleepy surprise I discovered a pair of similarly shaped mountains right outside the window. Was this a vision of what I wished for?

Minnesota has great diversity but we no longer have ranges of mountains, even though we do like to give ski hills and other notable humble rises the title of “mountain.” When we make our migratory trek to the Outpost in the Yukon, we are filled with daily mountain views outside our window.

The pair of mountains I contemplate on this January morning are of a similar shape of my Yukon morning view of Goat and Twin Mountain. They show the gentle age of roundness rather than craggy with tall spires.

Had my Minnesota address gone from its ancient post-glacial sandplain and erupted mutely overnight into towering mountains? Had I slept so hard I hadn’t heard the heaving and the tectonic thrusting of these twin mounts?

I didn’t rub my eyes to coax a clearer look. I couldn’t. I was transfixed.

High on the slopes the slopes of the white-covered range was covered with an otherworldly vegetation of unfamiliar feathery white limbs. I assessed the grade of the incline with keen attention towards the gradual shoulder. Perhaps it might offer me a route to the summit after a hearty breakfast.

That is if it were real. Well it was real. It’s just that it wasn’t a mountain. Instead it was the science of frost forming on the inside of my double-hung window. While it is a double-glazed window with an outside storm, the interior glass surface got cold last night behind our interior insulated cover. Consequently any indoor moisture that collects on the cold glass crystallizes. Clearly Jack Frost built these mountains.

The glowing heart of the mountains captured my attention. Through the translucent skim of ice, the surrealistic dawning glowed like a kitchen stove ember.

It seemed incongruous that this burning star could be entrapped deep inside a mountain of ice crystals. This closest of earth’s stars, the sun, known by astronomers as a yellow dwarf star, bears surface temperatures of over 10,000 °F and is over 93 million miles away.

Within reach of my alpine show was my camera. I wanted to catch the fireheart before it climbed out of the mountain’s core. I snapped a single shot and the phone rang.

I had been gone only minutes but whenI returned to the window, I was surprised to find droplets and an oak woods.  In my absence I didn’t witness the thievery of the morning dwarf star. The mountains were both gone. Had the mountains slipped into a vaporous hideout?

The power of the rising sun had quickly burned off the ephemeral art piece. It was the perfect heist.

Perhaps the real gift had been that the glowing window art had simply been a vehicle to remind me that moments slip away. The experience shows up fully and then in the next seconds it is merely history. . .a fragment of a story. This is not unlike life. I mustn’t despair over the lost phantom image, this was not a mournful morning message as much as it is a vivacious pronouncement to live each moment fully aware and with gobs of gratitude

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