Gender

I procrastinated for months before starting this project. At first I attributed the block to my usual bugbears -- lack of motivation, lack of time, mental fatigue, general failure as a human being -- then it occurred to me today that there was another reason I wasn't taking the photos or writing the text.

A 1.8-billion-year-old granite block is too big to be ignored.

This afternoon, it hit me that I was caught up on the gender identity of the mountain. In Navajo tradition, Tsisnaasjini' is male. But I have always thought of Mount Blanca as female. It didn't seem appropriate to use the Navajo name in this blog while referring to the mountain as "she," but it appears that I don't have much of a choice.

Defining the gender of a mountain is like defining the gender of a deity. If there's an internal dissonance between the prevailing concept of the deity and your own, you may drop off the road, at some point. And you'll either follow your own sense of the sacred, or you'll give up your faith.

Or your project, in this case.

As much as I respect the Navajo interpretation of this sacred directional mountain, Blanca is an overwhelmingly feminine presence to me. The comfort she gives me, the shape she lends to my days, the profound sense of reassurance that I find in her vast, glorious indifference, are feminine.

She's the Sacred glimpsed through a window in passing, as well as the Sacred viewed outdoors in frank awe.