Tuesday, January 12, 2025
The ancient volcano in today’s header photo is Broken Top—my favorite among the Cascade Mountain profiles—and easily visible from my house. I love the whole range, but Broken Top feels extra special. I think that’s well deserved. Its peaks practically explode with personality. And many times, I’ve ridden horseback there. Broken Top is an old friend, even if it’s a mountain.
It’s also a teacher.
Broken Top is an ancient, spent volcano—its fire was gone long before any of us arrived. And yet, on a clear winter day like this, it feels alive to me, especially for the precision of its contrasts.
I’m fascinated by how the mountain holds light and dark at once. Snow burns bright along its slopes, while shattered rock catches shadows in every crevice and angle. The contrasts don’t compete—they belong to each other. One reveals the other. Without shadows, Broken Top’s lights would flatten; without lights, its darks would disappear.
Seeing Broken Top—whether in person or in my photographs—always pulls at something in me.
Maybe because I’m noticing similar interplays inside my own days. Aging has brightnesses—clarity, spaciousness. I’m surprised to find myself more patient, more observant, more willing to look twice. But aging also brings shadows—losses, changes, old urgencies cooling, and quiet reckonings with time.
Like Broken Top, I’m a terrain. And like that mountain, I’m shaped by experience.
It feels natural to accept vivid contrasts on a mountain. Yet I’m struck by how reluctant I am to accept unexpected contrasts within myself. Maybe because early in life, we’re taught to sort our experiences into clean categories: “good years” and “hard years,” “growing seasons” and “declining seasons.”
In contrast, Broken Top does no such sorting. On the mountain, erosion lives beside endurance. Sharp ridges beside soft snow. Light beside dark. Everything adds up to the shape of the thing.
From where I stand, Broken Top’s contrasts feel honest—less dramatic than simply true. They reflect what happens when something stops trying to be anything other than what time has made of it.
Staring at the mountain, I can catch meaning. It adds up to a life that, viewed from far enough away, doesn’t need smoothing. Its irregularities—fallen rocks, jagged silhouettes, deep cuts—are precisely what’s letting the light in.
Looking longer increasingly matters to me. My first look gathers an outline—giving certainty. My second, longer look gathers depth. It shows me light gathering on one slope while darkness settles on another. Staying with the view lets its “true story” come through. And I’m touched by a mountain long past its fire and entirely at peace with that.
Broken Top never tries to impress. It simply stands there—weathered and luminous—letting the day draw its shadows where it will.
And in its very quiet way, Broken Top reassures that: we don’t lose our shape as we age; we reveal it.
— Diana
Diana's Morning Blog 