Word: mountain
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With those unspoken words, he left his room, went outside, and began to jog slowly up the steep hill, back to Route One. He looked at the base of the mountain (it was not a mountain, but he liked to call it that). The base was the steepest. It was, the boy thought, almost straight up for about thirty feet. There was nothing to hold onto--there was only the wet slippery clay, which three days before, in Southern California, had killed 11 people in a mudslide. The boy looked at this bank of clay, and then he began...
...slipping, desperately reached out with one hand, and found a rock that was secure. He hung onto it, trembling, and saw that he was only 15 feet above the highway. He reached out again. Again, nothing held. Five feet above his outstreched arm, the clay bank stopped and the mountain began. There, five feet away, were bushes that he could hold onto, bushes that would support him. With one foot, he found another solid rock and inched his way up. He was closer, but still he could not reach. With every breath, he felt his hold on the mountain losing...
...looked up. The mountain was much steeper than he had expected; the underbrush was much thicker. He could feel dirt and little stones in his boots, could feel the dirt rubbing its way into his injured toe; and for one fleeting instant, as he stared at the underbrush, the roots and vines started to move. "The spiders!" he cried to himself. But as the fear of the night before returned to him, he heard himself breathing. "No." He shouted, looking straight ahead. "I am safe in my breathing. Whatever happens I am safe in my breathing, and nothing can touch...
...beyond the first. As he climbed, he was scared--scared that he would turn back, that he would turn back and then have to start again or forever carry this failure with him. But all the while he felt his breathing. "I am safe there. I will climb this mountain. I will...
...green rose!" He shouted, "A green rose. Stephen Dedalus, it's a green rose." Yes, the boy had a sense for the aesthetics of the situation. He knew that the funny rubbery mountain weed by his side was not a green