Quotes & Sayings About The White Mountains

It's long since I've gone to the East Mountains.
How many seasons have the tiny roses bloomed?
White clouds - unblown - fall apart.
In whose court has the bright moon dropped? — Li Bai

When people look for the road in the clouds
The cloud road disappears
The mountains are tall and steep
The streams are wide and still
Green mountains ahead and behind
White clouds to east and west
If you want to find the cloud road
Seek it within — Hanshan

Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers. — Black Elk

The light irradiates white peaks of Annapurna marching down the sky, in the great rampart that spreads east and west for eighteen hundred miles, the Himalaya- the alaya (abode, or home) of hima (snow).Hibiscus, frangipani, bougainvillea: seen under snow peaks, these tropical blossoms become the flowers of heroic landscapes. Macaques scamper in green meadow, and a turquoise roller spins in a golden light. Drongos, rollers, barbets, and white Eqyptian vulture are the common birds, and all have close relatives in East Africa. — Peter Matthiessen

Rita Vargas caught her breath - the dark was spilling out of the mountains as the sun vanished in the west. The deep purple/blue shadows spread out on the water of the Caribe. The ocean was shadowy, yet at the same time, glowing. The massif green on one side, and velvety black on the other. And below, the lights of the cities scattered and burned, white, yellow, white, looking like gems. Stars.
She still recalls it as one of the most beautiful sights she'd ever witnessed, as if the coast of Veracruz were somehow welcoming its sons home. It would have astounded the dead if the could have looked out the windows. Why would they ever have left such a beautiful home for the dry bones and spikes of the desert? If they could have seen what she saw, they might have stayed home. — Luis Alberto Urrea

The greatest religion gives suffering to nobody," reads a weather-beaten sign, quoting the Buddha, at Chele La pass, the highest motorable point in the country, near Paro. This maxim is everywhere evident. As a Bhutanese friend and I walked in the mountains one afternoon, he reflexively removed insects from the path and gently placed them in the verge, out of harm's way. Early one morning in Thimphu, I saw a group of young schoolboys, in their spotless white-sleeved ghos, crouching over a mouse on the street, gently offering it food. In Bhutan, the horses that trudge up the steep trail to the Tiger's Nest monastery are reserved for out-of-shape tourists; Bhutanese don't consider horses beasts of burden and prefer not to make them suffer under heavy loads. Even harvesting honey is considered a sign of disrespect for the industrious bees; my young guide, Kezang, admonished me for buying a bottle of Bhutanese honey to take home. (Chastened, I left it there.) In — Madeline Drexler

The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway. Coaches and buckas had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied. — Stephen King

We gazed back over the fields to the farmhouse. Its white walls, faded wooden shutters and terra-cotta tiled roof peeped sleepily over the deep green domes of the orange trees, while the mountains looked benignly on - secure, solid and serene. Without exchanging a word, we both knew that this was going to be our new home. — Peter Kerr

It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset." "You are a strange man," said Sir Henry, when he had ceased. Umbopa laughed. "It seems to me that we are much alike, Incubu. Perhaps I seek a brother over the mountains. — H. Rider Haggard

I think I was a shy kid. I grew up without television. I had a dog, and we lived up in the White Mountains in the summer, and I had no friends up there. And I would just go play hide-and-seek with my dog and probably had some imaginary friends. — Dan Brown

The landscape started hard, sharp black mountains over my shoulder and thirsty young saguaros hugging patchy dirt. Gradually it let go, began to green on me a little. I crossed a river, watched succulents get fatter and farmland start to wave, hoarding the blue above and the few clouds it had to spare.

I knew the route somehow, knew the curves, the directions, the exact way to go. I knew it the way you know the stars are still up in the sky even though white sun obscures them. Everything that had happened before Lukeville and Sonoita began to liquify in memory, feeling more like fiction than personal history. Funerals and pain, girlfriends and mothers, roommates and priests all tumble away with the desert behind me. The only thing that's real is the road I see ahead. The only person in my life is the man sitting silently beside me. The place I'm going is the only place I've ever wanted to go. — Laurie Perez

For a short time we lived quietly. But this could not last. White men had found gold in the mountains around the land of winding water. — Chief Joseph

Unlike landed white men, she didn't need to climb mountains to experience mystic panic. All she needed was to set her alarm dock for the next morning, wake when it rang, and go to class. — Sherman Alexie

Daniel observed her from afar, and tried in vain to conceal the hunger in his eyes. She showed none of the disdain against the Indians that he had encountered from whites back east. Aimee was genuinely warm and friendly with these people who were like family to him. She obviously loved children. She played games with the younger ones, and each time she held Elk Runner's infant in her arms, a new wave of desire spread through him. He tried not to think about what it would be like to see her holding a child, their child, in her arms. That could never happen. His white mother had died in this wilderness, giving birth to him. No matter how she dressed, or her abilities on the trail, Aimee was still a white woman. Like a beautiful spring flower, she would wither and die in these mountains. Neither lasted long in this harsh environment. — Peggy L. Henderson

From a distance the world looks blue and green,
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.
From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man — Bette Midler

Tonight the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come marched in goose-step and raised a hand to salute "Heil Hitler!" Tonight the ghost wore a swastika on his armband instead of the simple red and white colors of Austria. And yet, on this silent night, the horrible specter seemed all but invisible in Vienna. Murphy could only wonder if he was the sole person at Sacher's who could hear the anthem of Hitler's hordes echoing distantly from beyond the mountains. — Bodie Thoene

Fair queen, at home there is none like thee,
But over the mountains is Snow-white free,
With seven little dwarfs, who are strange to see;
A thousand times fairer than thou is she.

Queen, thou art not the fairest now;
Snow-white over the mountain's brow
A thousand times fairer is than thou.

Queen, thou art the fairest here,
But not when Snow-white is near;
Over the mountains still is she,
Fairer a thousand times than thee. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Princess Keita," the dragon began, "this is Elina Shestakova of the Black Bear Riders of the Midnight Mountains of Despair in the Far Reaches of the Steppes of the Outerplains." He faced Elina and, smiling, said, "And Elina Shestakova of the Black Bear Riders of the Midnight Mountains of Despair in the Far Reaches of the Steppes of the Outerplains, this is Keita the Viper: Princess of the Royal House of Gwalchmai fab Gwyar, Second-Born Daughter and Fifth-Born Offspring to the White Dragon Queen of the Southlands, Protector of The Throne, and Bound Mate to Ragnar, Dragonlord Chief of the Olgeirsson Horde."
Keita narrowed blue eyes at the dragon. "Was that really necessary, Curled Horns?"
His grin did not falter. "It felt necessary and good. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to working with Elina Shestakova of the - "
"Do not bore me with that ridiculously long name yet again!" the royal roared. — G.A. Aiken

A long time from now someone unknown to me will stand on the white plain where I now stand. He will speak a different language and the mountains in the distance may have been ground down but there are certain constants that will reliably inform his life -- kings like great trees whose roots are watered in ignorance, men who come to war reluctantly only to discover they have the souls of jackals, and fortresses like mountains, as immovable and inevitable. I anticipate that a flash of intuition will make him look at the tumulus or crater or clamorous sprawling city where Troy once stood and intuit how many men once bent their minds toward its destruction. — Zachary Mason

I want to stretch our legs and show you the view of our valley. It's a tradition when we bring someone special to the ranch for the first time." He set the kitten on the seat opposite them and opened the door. He stepped out, then helped her to the ground and started to release her.
Pamela squeezed his hand and didn't let go.
John's quick smile told her he approved. He led her to a lookout and waved an arm in a sweeping motion. "Our valley."
"Really?" Delighted, she leaned forward to take in the view. Grasslands studded with cattle surrounded a big white house, outbuildings, a barn, and two smaller homes. She studied the house. From this distance, it looked large and comfortable, two-story, as John had described, with a porch across the front. She relaxed at the sight.
The distant mountains still held snow on their peaks. Stark blue sky stretched over the land, with several puffy white clouds floating by. Our valley, she echoed. — Debra Holland

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves. — Ernest Hemingway,

There were glaciers on the mountains, in my dream. Giant white and blue masses of ice, eons forming, creeping ever so slowly toward the valleys they would never reach. The valleys were filled with flowers, wild and abandoned, twisting, reaching like tallest trees far above my head. Fairies twirled and skimmed. Fairies. Beings that proclaimed that life was fair in this perfect world ... . — William David Hannah

We'll ride along the river. It's a mighty pretty sight..." Puffy white clouds floated across the azure blue sky. Pine-covered mountains crowned with snowcaps folded down into foothills that ringed the valley. Beneath the clouds the play of sun and shadow cast hazy blue-green patches on the mountainsides. A distant large-winged bird rode on air currents before diving into a clump of trees. — Debra Holland

He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long, golden beaches and the white beaches, so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains. He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it. He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning. — Ernest Hemingway,

Purple snow capped mountains marched off in either direction, with clouds floating around their middles like fluffy belts. In a massive valley between two of the largest peaks, a ragged wall of ice rose out of the sea, filling the entire gorge. The glacier was blue and white with streaks of black, so that it looked a hedge of dirty snow left behind on a sidewalk after a snowplow had gone by, only four million times as large. — Rick Riordan

Love is only surpassing sweet when it is directed toward a mortal object, and the secret of this ultimate sweetness only is defined by the bitterness of death. Thus the white peoples of the world foresee a time when their land with its rivers and mountains still lies under heaven as it does today, but other people dwell there; when their language is entombed in books, and their laws and customs have lost their living power. — Franz Rosenzweig

When she slowly straightened, the land was vast before her. The sun was setting down the river, casting a cold pink hue along the white-capped mountains that framed both sides of the valley. Upriver, the willow shrubs and gravel bars, the spruce forests and low-lying poplar stands, swelled to the mountains in steely blue. No fields or fences, homes or roads; not a single living soul as far as she could see in any direction. Only wilderness. — Eowyn Ivey

What if she remembered the fortress wrong? What if she climbed up and the sun did not come out? What if it did, but it felt the same as any other sunrise?
She could not risk tainting that precious memory. She clutched the locket around her neck, the one Radu had given her to replace her old leather pouch. Inside were the dusty remains of an evergreen sprig and a flower from these same mountains. She had carried them with her as talismans through the lands of her enemies. Now she was home, and still in the land of her enemies.
She would climb that peak one day, soon. When it was all hers. She would come back, and she would rebuild the fortress to honor Wallachia. — Kiersten White

I tried to describe impossible things like the scent of creosote - bitter, slightly resinous, but still pleasant - the high, keening sound of the cicadas in July, the feathery barrenness of the trees, the very size of the sky, extending white-blue from horizon to horizon, barely interrupted by the low mountains covered with purple volcanic rock. The hardest thing to explain was why it was so beautiful to me - to justify a beauty that didn't depend on the sparse, spiny vegetation that often looked half dead, a beauty that had more to do with the exposed shape of the land, with the shallow bowls of valleys between the craggy hills, and the way they held on to the sun. I found myself using my hands as I tried to describe it to him. — Stephenie Meyer

As the glow of the cabin windows turned to flickers through the trees and then to black, her eyes adjusted and the starlight alone on the pure white snow was enough to light her way. The cold scorched her cheeks and her lungs, but she was warm in her fox hat and wool. An owl swooped through the spruce boughs, a slow-flying shadow, but she was not frightened. She felt old and strong, like the mountains and the river. She would find her way home. — Eowyn Ivey

She stared out. She saw a vastness, a rising shape, indistinct in the rain, gray in the misty drizzle. At first she had thought it was a cloud, a great bank of fog drifting up over the mountains, but now she realized with a cold awe that it was real, a vast building climbing the mountainside, rising in a countless series of rooms, stairways, balconies, and galleries, far away and immense, its topmost roofs white with snow. And up there, like a needle sharp with ice, one uttermost pinnacle flew the remote black pennant of the Watch.
The Tower of Song. — Catherine Fisher

Journey's end
In western lands beneath the Sun
The flowers may rise in Spring,
The trees may bud, the waters run,
The merry finches sing.
Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night,
And swaying branches bear
The Elven-stars as jewels white
Amid their branching hair.
Though here at journey's end I lie
In darkness buried deep,
Beyond all towers strong and high,
Beyond all mountains steep,
Above all shadows rides the Sun
And Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
Nor bid the Stars farewell.J. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered by reinforced concrete. [ ... ] This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge mountains, its old baroque churches, and the beautiful suntanned women. — Oscar Niemeyer

Homesickness is a great teacher. It taught me, during an endless rainy fall, that I came from the arid lands, and like where I came from. I was used to dry clarity and sharpness in the air. I was used to horizons that either lifted into jagged ranges or rimmed the geometrical circle of the flat world. I was used to seeing a long way. I was used to earth colors
tan, rusty red, toned white
and the endless green of Iowa offended me. I was used to a sun that came up over mountains and went down behind other mountains. I missed the color and smell of sagebrush, and the sight of bare ground. — Wallace Stegner

Over the plains of Ethiopia the sun rose as I had not seen it in seven years. A big, cool, empty sky flushed a little above a rim of dark mountains. The landscape 20,000 feet below gathered itself from the dark and showed a pale gleam of grass, a sheen of water. The red deepened and pulsed, radiating streaks of fire. There hung the sun, like a luminous spider's egg, or a white pearl, just below the rim of the mountains. Suddenly it swelled, turned red, roared over the horizon and drove up the sky like a train engine. I knew how far below in the swelling heat the birds were an orchestra in the trees about the villages of mud huts; how the long grass was straightening while dangling locks of dewdrops dwindled and dried; how the people were moving out into the fields about the business of herding and hoeing. — Doris Lessing

Green mountains rise to the north;
white water rolls past the eastern city.
Once it has been uprooted,
the tumbleweed travels forever.
Drifting clouds like a wanderer's mind;
sunset, like the heart of your old friend.
We turn, pause, look back and wave,
Even our ponies look back and whine. — Li Bai

From the mountain peaks for streams descend and flow near the town; in the cascades the white water is calling, but the mistis do not hear it. On the hillsides, on the plains, on the mountaintops the yellow flowers dance in the wind, but the mistis hardly see them. At dawn, against the cold sky, beyond the edge of the mountains, the sun appears; then the larks and doves sing, fluttering their little wings; the sheep and the colts run to and fro in the grass, while the mistis sleep or watch, calculating the weight of their steers. In the evening Tayta Inti gilds the sk, gilds the earth, but they sneeze, spur their horses on the road, or drink coffee, drink hot pisco.
But in the hearts of the Puquios, the valley is weeping and laughing, in their eyes the sky and the sun are alive; within them the valley sings with the voice of the morning, of the noontide, of the afternoon, of the evening. — Jose Maria Arguedas

Approaching the Start of Civil Exams

Perhaps I was once a young Chinese scholar
approaching the start of civil exams,
my mind grown weary and sad from seclusion
with books on syntax and poetic style.

All that I knew were the mist-covered mountains
and sweet white blossoms of mountain apples
that grew in the valleys of my province.

But I had been gone over six years
busy with studies in the Heavenly City
empty and thin despite my work.

I showed my verses to an older poet
who told me a truth I longed to believe:
all knowledge is futile and barren
which does not open the love of your friends. — Jim Chapson

Alone, and start to think. There are the rushing waves ... mountains of molecules, each stupidly minding its own business ... trillions apart ... yet forming white surf in unison. Ages on ages ... before any eyes could see ... year after year ... thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? ... on a dead planet, with no life to entertain. Never at rest ... tortured by energy ... wasted prodigiously by the sun ... poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar. Deep in the sea, all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves ... and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity ... living things, masses of atoms, DNA, protein ... dancing a pattern ever more intricate. Out of the cradle onto the dry land ... here it is standing ... atoms with consciousness ... matter with curiosity. Stands at the sea ... wonders at wondering ... I ... a universe — Richard Feynman

At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains. — Anton Chekhov

Old and sick, more than one hundred years Face haggard, hair white, I'm happy to still live in the mountains A cloth covered phantom watching the years flow by Why envy people with clever ways of living? — Hanshan

Before the destruction of Sodom, God sent a message to Lot, "Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed." The same voice of warning was heard by the disciples of Christ before the destruction of Jerusalem: "When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains." Luke 21:20, 21. They must not tarry to secure anything from their possessions, but must make the most of the opportunity to escape. There was a coming out, a decided separation from the wicked, an escape for life. So it was in the days of Noah; so with Lot; so with the disciples prior to the destruction of Jerusalem; and so it will be in the last days. Again the voice of God is heard in a message of warning, bidding his people separate themselves from the prevailing iniquity. — Ellen G. White

A vertical battled pitted the Italians against the Austrians, who were starving up in the mountains.
The Italians also sent men to the firing squad "to set an example". I couldn't make up my mind which was more appalling: the mining war or the mountain war. And between an Italian general and a French one, I wouldn't've known which one to shoot first. — Jacques Tardi

As a result of the asthma I was sent to school in the country, and only visited Sydney for brief, violently asthmatic sojourns on my way to a house we owned in the Blue Mountains. — Patrick White

Only later I felt that poetry is like feeling another person lying next to you in the dark. Do you believe in poetry, in the spirit of poetry? I could see poetry in ballads, in the picture of the cathedral on the back of the postcard that my father sent my mother from London, in glaciers, peaks of mountains, river dust, Ian McEwan's covers of his books, cheap thrillers. Running gave me a gravitational pull. Running was my mother love. I was barefoot. There I was dressed in white. Matchstick legs. Hair standing up. I did not feel like a zero. I did not feel like a lost oar, unloved and unwanted, like a plant that needed water. A fleet of paper ships that needed to be mourned. I often felt homesick for the country of my mother. — Abigail George

Idealism, that gaudy coloring matter of passion, fades when it is brought beneath the trenchant white light of knowledge. Ideals, like mountains, are best at a distance. — Ellen Glasgow

After midday, the rain eased, and the Land Rover rode into Pokhara on a shaft of storm light. Next day there was humid sun and shifting southern skies, but to the north a deep tumult of swirling grays was all that could be seen of the Himalaya. At dusk, white egrets flapped across the sunken clouds, now black with rain; on earth, the dark had come. Then four miles above these mud streets of the lowlands, at a point so high as to seem overhead, a luminous whiteness shone- the light of snows. Glaciers loomed and vanished in the grays, and the sky parted, and the snow cone of Machhapuchare glistened like a spire of a higher kingdom. In the night, the stars convened, and the vast ghost of Machhapuchare radiated light, although there was no moon. — Peter Matthiessen

When the full moon was out the other night, it created one of the most spectacular scenes that I have seen in the Alps. The high glaciers of the Mont Blanc range were glowing an eerie bright blue-white, and they looked like huge ghost ships in the dark ocean of sky, sailing amongst black mountain valleys.

There were no clouds, and the moon was a huge and perfect disc tracking across the sky, shining on different parts of the glaciers through the night.

Looking up, I saw the black silhouette of the mid-altitude mountains below the ethereal shining high-mountain terrain, which created a weird vision: the ghostly glaciers floating, and appearing separate, contrasting sharply with the dark valleys beneath.

The Aiguille Verte especially, being so steep and isolated, seemed almost like a holographic mast with sails, plowing into the rolling waves, chasing after the Mont Blanc summit with its billowing spinnaker... — Steve Baldwin

I am an orphan, alone: nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of aeons. — C. G. Jung

Late in February, she stood on Munich Street and watched a single giant cloud come over the hills like a white monster. It climbed the mountains. The sun was eclipsed, and in its place, a white beast with a gray heart watched the town. — Markus Zusak

I didn't mean to upset you, Ms. Hamilton," his gaze shifted back to her. "It's a beautiful sight and I thought you'd like to see it." She gasped in delight at the vista before her. Distant purple mountains framed lush green meadows speckled with brown dots of cattle. A silver river threaded through clumps of trees. In the middle of the valley, ranch buildings clustered around a large white house. Elizabeth inhaled crisp air into her lungs... — Debra Holland

I found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before - so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them. — Henry David Thoreau

Peitaho Heavy rains fall on Yuyen, the northland kingdom of swallows. White pages of rain envelop the sky, and fishing boats off the Island of the Emperor Chin disappear on the ocean. Which way have they gone? More than a thousand years ago the mighty emperor Tsao Tsao cracked his whip and drove his army against the Tartars. He left us a poem: "Let us move east to the Stone Mountains." Today we still shiver in the autumn gale, in desolate winds, yet another man is in the world. — Mao Zedong

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was a light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo's side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Mountains clothed in snow
Robed in white against blue skies
Mirrored in the lake. — Timothy Salter

Sing to your mountains because as you sing, they are being cast into the sea.As you sing, the portals of heaven are opening. — Sherry K. White

Used to be you could see the orange glow of the hi-intensity arc-sodiums from North Conway, but no more. Now there's just the White Mountains, looking like dark triangles of crepe paper cut out by a child, and the pointless — Stephen King

She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina.
She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm. — Sarah Addison Allen

Leave me in Granada in the middle of paradise where my soul wells with poetry;
Leave me until my time comes and I may intone a fitting song.
Yes, I want my memorial stone in this land.
Granada! Holy place of the glory of Spain,
Your mountains are the white tents of pavilions,
Your walls are the circle of a vase of flowers,
Your plain a Moorish shawl embroidered with colour,
Your towers are palm trees that imprison you — Jose Zorrilla

He looks up. Again, it is there in the sky. The planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans. It is very close now. So close that he wonders if he could touch it. As he reaches up, he thinks he sees movement on its surface. Through the canopy of the forests and upon the slopes of the mountains and on the shores of the churning ocean. People maybe. Crowds of people all wrapped in white cloth. They are leaning into each other like dropped puppets. They sway lifelessly. He feels horror in the back of his throat, but still he reaches up. He can't help himself. It's just what he does next. — Joseph Fink

Tier on tier of beautiful mountains and streams Blue green vistas locked in white clouds The mist makes my bandana wet Dew coats my grass cape My feet climb in straw sandals My hand holds an old wooden stick When I gaze down again on the dusty world It has become a land of phantoms and dreams to me — Hanshan

The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga. — Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

White Sky. Trees fading at the skyline, the mountains gone. My hands dangled from the cuffs of my jacket as if they weren't my own. I never got used to the way the horizon there could just erase itself and leave you marooned, adrift, in an incomplete dreamscape that was like a sketch for the world you knew -the outline of a single tree standing in for a grove, lamp-posts and chimneys floating up out of context before the surrounding canvas was filled in-an amnesia-land, a kind of skewed Heaven where the old landmarks were recognizable but spaced too far apart, and disarranged, and made terrible by the emptiness around them. — Donna Tartt

I know my family and I would always go up to the mountains just for fun. We always skied. Then, all of a sudden, my brother started snow boarding. Older brother thing, I had to do what he was doing. So I started snow boarding. — Shaun White

Out would come another star, winking at me over the white shoulder of the Rothorn. Round me stood the mountains, exquisite examples of peace - A world above man's head, to let him see How boundless might his soul's horizons be - and here was I, minding because guests went into their bedrooms and told each other I had five children. Well, so I had. Nothing could possibly be more true. How vast, yet of what clear transparency - and minding because they said I was forty, which I certainly would be some day, if I went on living at the rate I was doing. How it were good to abide there and be free - The fact was, I reflected, my eyes on the glittering slopes of the Weisshorn, we were all too close together, and my guests, being of one family, only made this closeness worse. The remedy - it burst upon me suddenly in a flash, - was not to waste my serenity vainly longing for the guests I had to go, but to invite yet more of them. Unrelated ones. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Some miles to the North, a ring of mountains rose out of the clouds. The peaks were clad in snow and ice, and together they looked like an ancient, jagged crown resting atop the layers of mist. The eastward-facing scarps shone brilliantly in the light of the morning sun, while long blue shadows cloaked the western sides and stretched dwindling into the distance, tenebrous daggers upon the billowy, snow-white plain. — Christopher Paolini

Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted to explore it,
to penetrate to the shores of its Lake Tchad, and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads. The expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but to the Cataracts, or perchance to the mouth of the White Nile; but it is the black Nile that concerns us. — Henry David Thoreau

Bilbo's Last Song

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
Beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
The wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
Beneath the ever-bending sky,
But islands lie behind the Sun
That I shall raise ere all is done;
Lands there are to west of West,
Where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
Beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
And beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
And fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast! — J.R.R. Tolkien

Harry had never in all his life had such a Christmas dinner. A hundred fat, roast turkeys; mountains of roast and boiled potatoes; platters of chipolatas; tureens of buttered peas, silver boats of thick, rich gravy and cranberry sauce - and stacks of wizard crackers every few feet along the table. These fantastic party favors were nothing like the feeble Muggle ones the Dursleys usually bought, with their little plastic toys and their flimsy paper hats inside. Harry pulled a wizard cracker with Fred and it didn't just bang, it went off with a blast like a cannon and engulfed them all in a cloud of blue smoke, while from the inside exploded a rear admiral's hat and several live, white mice. Up at the High Table, Dumbledore had swapped his pointed wizard's hat for a flowered bonnet, and was chuckling merrily at a joke Professor Flitwick had just read him. Flaming — J.K. Rowling

I
have a face like a washrag. I sing
love songs and carry steel.
I would rather die than cry. I can't
stand hounds can't live without them.
I hang my head against the white
refrigerator and want to scream like
the last weeping of life forever but
I am bigger than the mountains. — Charles Bukowski

There were mountains; there were valleys; there were streams. She climbed the mountains; roamed the valleys; sat on the banks of streams ... when, from the mountain-top, she beheld, far off, across the Sea of Marmara the plains of Greece, and made out (her eyes were admirable) the Acropolis with a white streak or two which must, she thought, be the Parthenon, her soul expanded with her eyeballs, and she prayed she might share the majesty of the hills, know the serenity of the plains, etc. etc., as all such believers do. — Virginia Woolf

Behind them, the white caps of the mountains gleamed like wicked teeth. — Tam Linsey

But you, cloudless girl, question of smoke, corn tassel.
You were what the wind was making with illuminated leaves.
Behind the nocturnal mountains, white lily of conflagration,
ah, I can say nothing! You were made of everything. — Pablo Neruda

I want to say that further you are not a great chief of this country. That you have no following, no power, no control." Logan continued, "You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all you have and are today is because of the government. If it were not for the government you would be freezing and starving today in the mountains. I merely say these things to notify you that you cannot insult the people of the United States of America or its committees ... the government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men.
-Senator John Logan, 1883 — Dee Brown

At the concession stand, Leroy Ninker said, "Thank you very much!" He said, "Extra butter on that?" He also said, "Yippie-i-oh." Leroy Ninker said "Yippie-i-oh" because Leroy Ninker had a dream. He wanted to be a cowboy. On Wednesday nights, the Bijou Drive-In Theater ran a Western double feature, and Leroy Ninker stood and watched in wonder as the great white expanse of the Bijou screen filled with purple mountains, wide-open plains, and cowboys. The cowboys wore ten-gallon hats. They wore boots. They carried lassos. The cowboys were — Kate DiCamillo

Perhaps I shall not write my account of the Paleolithic at all, but make a film of it. A silent film at that, in which I shall show you first the great slumbering rocks of the Cambrian period, and move from those to the mountains of Wales ... from Ordovician to Devonian, on the lush glowing Cotswolds, on to the white cliffs of Dover ... An impressionistic, dreaming film, in which the folded rocks arise and flower and grow and become Salisbury Cathedral and York Minster ... — Penelope Lively

A Language"

Today the sky is blue dust
and the mountains blue shadows
against the dust so only
the snow line across the peaks
actually exists, a scribbled
white cursive, words piling up
here and thinning out there,
like the long sentence you'd write
against the sky if you thought
you had that much to say. — Robert W. King

Imagine that the whole world belongs to you. The birch trees in New Hampshire's White Mountains are yours, and so are the cirrus clouds in the western sky at dusk and the black sand on the beaches of Hawaii's big island.
You own everything, my dear sovereign - the paintings in all the museums of the world, as well as the internet and the wild horses and the roads. Please take good care of it all, OK? Be an enlightened monarch who treats your domain with reverent responsibility. And make sure you also enjoy the full measure of fun that comes with such mastery. Glide through life as if all of creation is yearning to honor and entertain you. — Rob Brezsny

Who will you be when faced with the end?
The end of a kingdom,
The end of good men,
Will you run?
Will you hide?
Or will you hunt down evil with a venomous pride?

Rise to the ashes,
Rise to the winter sky,
Rise to the calling,
Make heard the battle cry.
Let it scream from the mountains
From the forest to the chapel,
Because death is a hungry mouth
And you are the apple.

So who will you be when faced with the end?
When the vultures are circling
And the shadows descend
Will you cower?
Or will you fight?
Is your heart made of glass?
Or a pure Snow White? — Lily Blake

It seemed such an extraordinary notion - that I could set off from home and walk 1,800 miles through woods to Georgia, or turn the other way and clamber over the rough and stony White Mountains to the fabled prow of Mount Katahdin, floating in forest 450 miles to the north in a wilderness few have seen. A little voice in my head said: "Sounds neat! Let's do it! — Bill Bryson

Mountains. They stand at every view, like a mother offering a blanket in which to wrap everyday life and shelter it from useless. dreads. In june they are walls of white rhodendron blossom. In autumn the forests set themselves afflame with color. Even winter has its icy charms. — Barbara Kingsolver

Pedaling down the maple lined drive, quicksilver temper ebbed, her resilient spirits were lifted with the beauty of the day. The valley was stirring with life. Small clusters of fragile violets and red clover dotted the rolling meadows. Lines of fresh laundry waved in the early breeze. The boundary of mountains was tooped by a winter's coat, not yet the soft, lush green it would be in a month's time, but patched with stark black trees and the intermittent color of pines. Clouds scudded thin and white across the sky, chased by the teasing wind which whispered of spring and fresh blossoms. — Nora Roberts

However, whatever frightening mask it might assume, the national spirit in its original state was of pristine whiteness. Traveling through a country like Thailand, Honda realized more clearly than ever the simplicity and purity of things Japanese, like transparent stream water
through which one could glimpse pebbles below, or the probity of Shinto rites. Honda's life was not imbued with such spirit. Like the majority of Japanese he ignored it, behaving as though it did not exist and surviving by
escaping from it. All his life he had dodged things fundamental and artless: white silk, clear cold water, the zigzag white paper of the exorciser's staff fluttering in the breeze, the sacred precinct marked by a torii, the gods'
dwelling in the sea, the mountains, the vast ocean, the Japanese sword with its glistening blade so pure and sharp. Not only Honda, but the vast majority of Westernized Japanese, could no longer stand such intensely native elements. — Yukio Mishima

The detail over which these monks went mad with joy was the universe itself;
the only thing really worthy of enjoyment. The white daylight shone
over all the world, the endless forests stood up in their order. The lightning awoke and the tree fell and the sea gathered into mountains and the ship went down, and all these disconnected and meaningless and terrible objects were all part of one dark and fearful conspiracy of goodness, one merciless scheme of mercy. — G.K. Chesterton

The clouds floating white and restless in the sky were those you see only in May or June. They were innocent companions, still young and flighty, who ran playfully across the blue road to hide suddenly behind high mountains, linking arms and running away, sometimes crumpling up like handkerchiefs, sometimes unravelling into streamers, and eventually playing a practical joke by setting themselves down on the mountain like white caps. — Stefan Zweig

All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dreamlike business he'd ever witnessed waking - the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds high and white, catching daylight from beyond the valley, others ribbed and gray and pink, the lowest of them rubbing the peaks of Bussard and Queen mountains; and beneath this wondrous sky the black valley, utterly still, the train moving through it making a great noise but unable to wake this dead world. — Denis Johnson

I AM KORROK. In the mountains of Uruguay, a goat gets its hoof caught in a posthole and the bone snaps like a twig. The splinter juts from its skin, blood spraying onto white fur. It is stuck like that for three days. Finally, a wolf mother comes along, carrying her pup in her jaws. She lets the pup feed off the goat, gnawing bits of fur and skin and tearing at muscle. The goat feels it and screams and there is pain and pain and neither the goat nor the wolf nor the pup understand their place in the machine. I stand above all, and call them fags. I AM KORROK. — David Wong

Only mountains can feel the frozen warmth of the sun through snow's gentle caress on their peaks — Munia Khan

Death Valley is the perfect flesh-grilling device, the Foreman Grill in Mother Nature's cupboard.

It's a big, shimmering sea of salt ringed by mountains that bottle up the heat and force it right back down on your skull. The average air temperature hovers around 125 degrees, but once the sun rises and begins broiling the desert floor, the ground beneath Scott's feet would hit a nice, toasty 200 degrees - exactly the temperature you need to slow roast a prime rib. Plus, the air is so dry that by the time you feel thirsty, you could be as good as dead; sweat is sucked so quickly from your body,you can be dangerously dehydrated before it even registers in your throat. Try to conserve water,and you could be a dead man walking.

But every July, ninety runners from around the world spend up to sixty straight hours running down the sizzling black ribbon of Highway 190, making sure to stay on the white lines so the soles of their running shoes don't melt. — Christopher McDougall

And in front of it all are the pearly gates: the proverbial entrance to Heaven that she, in earthly life, thought might not exist. But they are real, not myth or fantasy.
As she passes through them, several people greet her. In foreign tongues even, but she understands. Language no longer matter. There are no barriers between herself and others, just love.
The gorgeous views seem to go on forever. Ornate structures, mansions, banquet halls, and natural beauty, orchards, gardens. People congregate around huge marble fountains. In the distance are snow-capped mountains of the purist white. She can hear the sounds of rushing rivers and the surf of the ocean at once.
Everyone around her is happy, loving, thankful. A choir sings songs of joy and peace while others play musical instruments of every kind in perfect harmony. Children laugh and play in the streets as well as in the clouds above her head. — Victoria Kahler

The near end of the street was rather dark and had mostly vegetable shops. Abundance of vegetables - piles of white and green fennel, like celery, and great sheaves of young, purplish, sea-dust-coloured artichokes ... long strings of dried figs, mountains of big oranges, scarlet large peppers, a large slice of pumpkin, a great mass of colours and vegetable freshness ... — D.H. Lawrence

The weeks up there were almost the most beautiful in my life. I breathed the pure, clear air, drank the icy water from streams and watched the herds of goats grazing on the steep slopes, guarded by dark-haired, musing goatherds. At times I heard storms resound through the valley and saw mists and clouds at unusually close quarters. In the clefts of rocks I observed the small, delicate, bright coloured flowers and the many wonderful mosses, and on clear days I used to like to walk uphill for an hour until I could see the clearly outlined distant peaks of high mountains, their blue silhouettes, and white, sparkling snow fields across the other side of the hill. — Hermann Hesse

A new darkness pulled away the room, inked out flesh and outlined bones. My mother was wide awake again. She become sharply herself - bone, wire, antenna - but she was not afraid. She had been pared down like this before, when she had travelled up the mountains into rare snow - alone in white not unlike being alone in black. She had also sailed a boat safely between land and land. — Maxine Hong Kingston

She also said that Esmenda Jenkins Dube
would have wanted a northern life,
as far north as north can be, limits of north
where it was so cold nothing there understood hellfire,
and the mountains were white, like full-hipped women
sleeping undisturbed, women of the cold clouds
breathing out more cold clouds that departed their mouths
when they whispered heaven in their northern dreams. — Thylias Moss

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. — Cormac McCarthy

I settled at Cold Mountain long ago Already it seems like ages Wandering free I roam the woods and streams Lingering to watch things be themselves Men don't come this far into the mountains Where white clouds gather and billow Dry grass makes a comfortable mattress The blue sky is a fine quilt Happy to pillow my head on the rock I leave heaven and earth to endless change — Hanshan

Snowboarding's tough, because you've got to go to the mountains. For me, I love the skateboard season because I get to hangout at home and still be skating. I don't have to travel to Norway or Japan or these crazy places to be snowboarding. — Shaun White

We drove out along the coast road. There was the green of the headlands, the white, red-roofed villas, patches of forest, and the ocean very blue with the tide out and the water curling far out along the beach. We drove through Saint Jean de Luz and passed through villages farther down the coast. Back of the rolling country we were going through we saw the mountains we had come over from Pamplona. The road went on ahead. Bill looked at his watch. It was time for us to go back. He knocked on the glass and told the driver to turn around. The driver backed the car out into the grass to turn it. In back of us were the woods, below a stretch of meadow, then the sea. — Ernest Hemingway,

She designed the cakes and I worked out the recipes. The first year we each created a signature cake. Genie's was called the Goddess: really tall, all white on the outside, wrapped in mountains of coconut and whipped cream, with a passion-fruit heart."
"And yours was called the Shrinking Violet. Unassuming on the outside but pretty special once you worked your way in." She reached over and squeezed my wrist.
"Wish I'd thought of that. You'd understand if you knew my sister." By now I was a little drunk. "One year Genie came up with Melting Cakes. You know, like flourless chocolate, the kind that are melted in the middle? They were gorgeous neon colors, and I made the flavors intense- blood orange, blueberry, lime, hibiscus, and caramel. — Ruth Reichl

it takes just as much training to get along with people. Only, training by yourself in the mountains won't do you any good. You need to surround yourself with others. As you get to know them, of course you take the chance that you'll end up hurting them, or they'll end up hurting you. One of those things might very well happen. That's the only way we learn... about others, and about ourselves. You're a black-belt in martial arts, but I'd guess you still a white-belt in social skills. Someday, you're going to meet someone that truly wants to be your friend, and you, theirs. But it if you don't keep training, you won't be ready when that happens." ~Shigure Sohma — Natsuki Takaya