Being an inhabitant of a small town on the foothills of Orlické hory, I’ve had mountains watching over me ever since I was born. In this short blogpost, I would like to contemplate the meaning that mountains have to me and what role they play in my life.

Thanks to my parents and their love for these silent giants of stone, a trip to mountains has been a regular event for me ever since I could walk (maybe even sooner, thanks for carrying me on your back, dad!). At first, we’ve only ever visited the not-so-large, but still beautiful Czech mountain ranges every year (usually Krkonoše, Šumava, or Orlické hory near my birthplace), hiking in summer, skiing during the winter.

In high school, I’ve stopped going on these trips with my parents, mostly because of time-related issues, however, I’ve still had that longing for mountains in me, so I started going on my own or with some of my friends, we’ve even started going to Austrian Alps together annually.

It was probably at the mountainside of Großglockner, watching the Alps ranging from where I was standing all the way to Italy, where I realized that mountains play such a great role in my life. Calmness took over my mind every time I looked down from these hills. I was there, above the clouds, and all the troubles of everyday life were underneath them where I could not see them and from where they could not reach me.

It is probably for this reason why I love mountains so much. It’s not the adrenaline that one feels when climbing them / skying on them, it is the peace they create by they mere existence.

A quick note to my nickname that I chose for this blog, Kailash. Mount Kailash is one of the sacred Buddhist mountains in Tibet, since the eastern philosophy also plays a great role in my life, I thought it would be suitable to use for this project.

I’ll wrap this up with a short haiku that I wrote:

Above the white clouds
Cold mountaintops are chanting
A promise of peace