From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.

I have something pretty radical to share with you today.

It's the 11th, and to celebrate my Year of Turning Forty I'm posting something on Edenland on the 11th of each month. Last month, on my 39th birthday, was this. Each thing will be ... "Bucket list-y things .... like getting my hair cut short, or climbing the Harbour Bridge. Or something incredibly meaningful. Or incredibly ridiculous."

So. Here goes. Ready?

For almost four years, I've shared my laughter and pain and the full spectrum in between ... but I've never properly shared something else. Something big. I've alluded to it and once I linked to it, but I've never actually written the words out loud.

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I live in the Blue Mountains.

                                                             Proof

I first moved up here as a child in late 1979, then moved away in 1987. I only expected to stay a short time when I came back in '98, but Fate and the Wind and God had other ideas. SO annoying ... and yet not. The mountains are very soothing for a troubled soul. I can't think of anywhere else to go, anyway.

We live in the house that Dave built, overlooking trees and valleys. On a clear night, you can see the lights of Sydney from the upstairs bedroom. The air is so nice to breathe, and the sky is like a map of constellations. I can cross "Panic about tsunamis!" off my anxiety list.

Autumn has began its annual mockery ... I do not enjoy cold weather. Yet this autumn, this particular one .. is making me realise to not start wailing in my thermals just yet. Leaves are turning blood red, yellow, starting to fall. Yesterday I used my x-ray vision eyes and saw beneath the branches to the buds of spring inside, already waiting patiently.

You can't get to summer without winter.

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Sometimes, when we go away ... we come down the highway and hit Nepean and I swear we breathe a sigh of relief. It can get confining and crazy up here. I hated living here for so many years; it's only now I'm realising how much these mountains continue to shape me. I got married here. I had my boys here. After those trips away, when we drive back up again, twisting and turning ... we walk inside and I feel the closest to home I've ever felt.

I'm not sure I chose the Blue Mountains. I think they chose me.

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There was a state election recently ... there's a lot of Greenies and alternative-type people up here. I stood in Katoomba and snapped this pic:

And without moving I turned to my left and snapped this one. And I loved that I share the same space with people who care about culture jamming:

                                       Sweeeeeeet!
 
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Do you think where you live shapes who you are? (And if a really, REALLY big tsunami hits Sydney, could it reach up here?)