WHEN THE MOUNTAIN FALLS

“I want to tell you about the mountain, the one that fell down.”

When the coronavirus pandemic started in March, 2020, I was the artist-in-residence at the Gushul Studio in Blairmore, Alberta. When I arrived, the world still seemed mostly normal. During my time there, everything changed, shut down, fell apart. When I left, life had been transformed beyond recognition. I tried to make art about other things, but couldn’t. I needed to respond to where I was, and what was happening.

I looked out of the window and saw the shattered summit of Turtle Mountain towering over the town, over the studio, over my work, over everything that happened during that strange month. The mountain had partially fallen down in a rockslide in 1903. I realized it was an apt metaphor for all the things in life that we think are solid, but that fall apart unexpectedly. This book is the result of that realization, and a meditation on instability, unpredictability, endurance, connection, and (hopefully) survival in the midst of a time when all the things we thought we could count on in life came crashing down.

Stiff leaf binding with slipcase: 5 x 5 x 1.5”

The complete text of the book is underneath the image gallery, below.

I want to tell you about the mountain, the one that fell down.

I want to tell you because it is about me and here but is also about all of us, everywhere, right now, trying to make sense of a world that went from being knowable and familiar to strange and unpredictable before our eyes, because it’s only through this shared knowing that we can trust that we are not alone. And we need this. I do.

I look out my window at Turtle Mountain, the jagged rocks of its broken top dusted by snow. 

I want to tell you to look there too, across mountains, across prairies, across oceans, across cities, across fields and farms and rivers and cultures and nations and seasons and days and nights and dreams and fears. Look to the horizon and I will look too and I will tell you what I see, what I know.

What I know is this: 
Turtle Mountain fell down. At 4:10am on April 29, 1903, 110 million metric tons of limestone broke off and slid from the summit of the mountain, burying the sleeping town of Frank, Alberta.

The slide lasted 100 seconds. The rock that fell from the mountain covered an area of 3 square kilometers, 14 meters deep on average, 45 meters deep in places. It’s still there, a sprawling boulderfield stretching down from the shattered face of the mountain, across the river valley below, dominating the landscape that surrounds me. 

And I wonder: if a mountain can come crashing down and kill you in your sleep, what can you count on?

We thought it was safe here, in this time, in this place. We thought we could trust the systems that make up our world. We assumed that our lives would go on predictably without unforeseen threats, that years from now they would look much like today. We were wrong. 

All the things we think we can count on, the things we think are stable, come tumbling down. The mountain is the mountain, but the mountain is the metaphor for all the things in life that we trust that fall down, fall apart, leaving us buried under a slide of fragments of what used to be whole and we believed would remain so. 

We would, if we could, take the shattered rubble that tumbled down from all the mountains of our lives, and put it back together, rebuild what we lost, stronger this time, so it will never slide again. But we can’t. 

And I wonder: how long before we know how much damage was done? We’re beginning to see the cracks and weaknesses in our governmental systems, our economic systems, our social systems, our immune systems, in all the systems and forces that brought everything down. 

And we know now that we were never as safe as we thought, that the signs were there and even if we could not heed them, like the miners in Frank in 1903, who heard rumbling and creaking noises coming from inside the mountain before it fell, audible hints of geological instability.

I look out my window at the broken mountain, its top missing and scarred. It towers over me, over this house, over this life, over these difficult times. It fell down, yet its remainder still stands, somehow, a monument to both instability and a deeper endurance. 

And so:
I want to tell you to look out your own window, and to remember that we are all waiting, enduring, surviving, trying to make sense of these strange times together. And to remember that we will pass through them, like the highway and rail line that travel through the rock slide at the base of Turtle Mountain, in an open clear path to whatever destinations lie beyond: beyond this time, beyond this place, beyond the prairies and across the mountains. The mountains may fall, but for many of us, our lives will eventually continue on.