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“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

— John Muir (1838–1914). American naturalist, writer, and conservationist. My First Summer in the Sierra (1911).

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I have lived here on my mountain for decades. Three, I suppose. For part of that time, I was a weekender–a stranger, if you will. Then, I settled in full-time. These days I’ve lived here on my road longer than anyone else, so it’s natural, it seems to me, that I call it my mountain. But one morning, looking out my kitchen window, I caught a glimpse of something vague rising up across the road and beyond the bare trees. I leaned in closer to see more, to see more clearly.

I could hardly believe what I saw: the western slope of Jordan’s mountain.

Jordan’s my neighbor at the end of our road. From his deck, the mountain gathers itself fully. It rises in one unbroken sweep, its long slope climbing steadily toward a rounded summit that seems almost deliberate in its restraint—no jagged drama, no sudden spire, just a steady lifting of earth toward sky. Even in winter’s bareness, when the trees surrender their leaves and the mountain shows its bones, the shape holds. The eye travels upward almost without effort, drawn along faint ridgelines and subtle folds in the land until it reaches that quiet crest.

What has always struck me is how completely the peak reveals itself there. Standing on Jordan’s deck, nothing interrupts the view. The mountain appears whole, self-contained, as if it had chosen that vantage point for its portrait.

Over time, without quite intending to, I began to think of it as Jordan’s mountain. After all, he was the one who could see it fully, standing there on his deck. If a mountain can belong anywhere, it seemed to belong there.

That’s why the glimpse from my own kitchen window surprised me. Through the bare branches across the road, beyond the field I know so well, the familiar rise appeared—partial, yes, but undeniable. The same long slope. The same patient ascent. The same quiet summit, just visible enough to recognize.

In that glimpse, I knew at once what it was. As I stood there smiling at my recognition, a thought swept across my mind:

“If my trees weren’t in the way, I could see Jordan’s mountain, all of it, clearly.”

My smile widened and I started chuckling out loud. I kept hearing over and over and over again the rumbling sound of my voice:

My trees.

Jordan’s mountain.

My mountain.

In my laughter, I lapsed into a moment of geographical precision that pinned me down. I was standing on my mountain in Virginia at 38.81° N, 78.52° W.

I began to wonder. What if I followed that latitude all the way around the globe?

In my mind’s eye, I did. Eastward. All around the world, following the morning sun.

I crossed the Blue Ridge, headed toward the Atlantic, and sailed out across an ocean whose swells rose and fell like mountains of water. No trees to obstruct my view. No neighbor’s deck to offer a better one. Just wave after wave, each crest giving way to another until sea and sky seemed to meet at the farthest reaches of sight.

And lo! The coast of Portugal. Elvas (38.88° N), a town of whitewashed houses and ancient fortifications rising above the plains of Alentejo. Old walls. Countryside stretched out toward distant hills. Olive groves. Fields whose colors changed with the seasons. And, somewhere, I was certain, stood someone just like me, surveying that familiar landscape, as pleased with their view as I was with mine.

Minha!

Farther east. Spain. Alvarado (38.81° N), broad agricultural plains of Extremadura. Fields stretched beneath an enormous sky. Olive trees, low hills, and an occasional stone farmhouse. Here, too, someone stood at a window, looking out over land that had become as much a part of their life as my mountain had become of mine.

¡Mía!

Across the Mediterranean, past islands rising from blue water. The rugged highlands of Turkey. Afyonkarahisar (38.76° N), an immense volcanic rock thrust upward from the city, crowned by a fortress that had watched over the surrounding countryside for centuries. I imagined someone on a nearby terrace looking up and claiming that great stone sentinel.

Benim!

Farther east, the broad plains of Central Asia. Near Qarshi (38.86° N), Uzbekistan, cultivated fields and irrigation channels spread across a landscape shaped by desert and river. Beyond the green patches of farmland lay the dry expanses of the steppe, their horizons so wide that my own wooded mountain seemed almost enclosed by comparison. Somewhere beneath that enormous sky, someone most assuredly was looking across the land with my own proud innocence.

Meniki!

Still onward and onward. Across the deserts and mountain corridors of western China. Zhangye (38.93° N), where the Hexi Corridor runs between distant ranges. Ocher hills, red sandstone, green fields nourished by mountain water, and barren slopes rising toward snow-covered heights. I could almost see someone standing at a window, taking in that extraordinary landscape and thinking what I had thought so many times.

我的！(Wǒ de!)

Across the Yellow Sea and a peninsula where a line drawn near this latitude once answered whose? with barbed wire. I hurried on, not wanting to ask anyone there to shout mine.

Then open water once more, and the islands of Japan. Near Sakata (38.92° N), rice fields spread across the coastal plain, with Mount Chōkai rising majestically, its volcanic slopes climbing toward a summit that wears snow well into spring. There, too, someone was looking toward that great mountain with affection like mine.

私のもの！ (Watashi no mono!)

Then came the Pacific, so vast that I wondered whether I might have undertaken more traveling than a man standing in his kitchen ought reasonably to attempt. But eventually the western coast of America appeared. I crossed mountains, deserts, and high plateaus until I reached Colorado Springs (38.83° N). Pikes Peak rising above the city, its great summit towering over the eastern edge of the Rockies. Surely someone stood looking toward that mountain, making the same declaration I’d made so often.

My mountain!

I laughed again. I had gone all around the world, assigning mountains to people who had never asked me to do so, just as I had assigned Jordan’s to him.

And there I stood in my kitchen, looking out on the world.

My trees.

My mountain.

And beyond the bare branches, just visible across the road, was the western slope of Jordan’s mountain.

I hadn’t moved an inch.

I smiled, again and again and again. In one fell swoop of the gazetteer, my and mine had dissolved into our and ours.