Thou who wouldst see the lovely and the wild
Mingled in harmony on Nature's face,
Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot
Fail not with weariness, for on their tops
The beauty and the majesty of earth,
Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget
The steep and toilsome way.
This is the beginning of the poem “Monument Mountain,” written by William Cullen Bryant. Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New-York Evening Post. He penned the piece in the early 1800’s, inspired by Monument Mountain, a large peak in Great Barrington MA.
He continues: There, as thou stand'st,
The haunts of men below thee, and around
The mountain summits, thy expanding heart
Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world
To which thou art translated, and partake
The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look
Upon the green and rolling forest tops,
And down into the secrets of the glens,
And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once,
Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds,
And swarming roads, and there on solitudes
That only hear the torrent, and the wind,
And eagle's shriek.
Additional fun fact about Monumental Mountain: in 1850, authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville were reported to have spent an afternoon on the mountain picnicking. A sudden thunderstorm forced them to seek cover in a boulder cave where they engaged in a lengthy discussion that inspired some of Melville's ideas for his novel Moby Dick.
While in the Berkshires these last few weeks, I finally had the opportunity to hike Monument Mountain. It has a 1642-foot summit, which you can reach in a rigorous, but thrilling, upward climb. There is a 360 view at the top, that indeed inspires feelings of awe and natural majesty. I get why the poets were inspired.
There’s a more complicated history to the place, though. A plaque at the base of the trail teaches that: “Monument Mountain has been sacred to the Mohican people and their ancestors since time immemorial. Tribal members left stone offerings imbued with prayers on the mountain, creating the “monument” for which it’s named. The original monument, however, was destroyed by white residents after the Mohicans were dispossessed and forced from the area [to Wisconsin], away from their ancestral land and sacred spaces.”
This is the story of any profound natural space, isn’t it? Whether the American mountains, or the tributaries of the Amazon, or African bluffs, human history is full of voluntary migration and forced dispossession; reverent attachments to place and callous exploitation of its natural gifts. Monument Mountain was a sacred Mohican site and a place where the great American poets dreamed. It is not exclusively one thing or the other.
The Torah portion this week speaks extensively about the spiritual importance of a majestic place: the Land of Israel. It designates the central sanctuary site - the one day Jerusalem. The portion explains the sacred pilgrimages to that place. It proscribes the laws about what you can eat there, and how much of the land’s yield you must give to charity.
This Torah portion unequivocally connects the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and it makes clear why the Jews of today still turn our hearts there in prayer. It demonstrates our deep connection and reverence for that place, the central place where we come into conversation with our ancestors and God. It is why we maintain that desire for Zion even after being brutally driven from our homeland time after time, throughout history.
However, the portion also highlights how there are others who are also indigenous to the land and it details how inevitably there will be friction between the different ethnic groups who call it home.
This is why it is important for us to pay attention to the parts of this week’s Torah reading where God reminds us that the land only truly belongs to one entity and that entity is God. God makes it clear that every human of every race, nation, and religion is just a guest on this earth. Every human is a brief sojourner, hiking small steps in the vast beauty of creation. Rather than fight to a bloody death over who owns it more, it would behoove us, Torah teaches, to inhabit and lead others upon that land with reverence for God and God’s natural world. With a sacred gift comes a sacred responsibility, and that message is strongly conveyed this week.
Halfway up the Monument Mountain hike, there’s a giant boulder with an inscription - aptly named “Inscription Rock.” It reads "This ridge and the cliffs of Monument Mountain were conveyed to the Trustees of Public Reservations by deed bearing date October 19 AD 1899 by fulfillment of a wish of Rosalie Butler that such portions of this mountain might be preserved to the People of Berkshire as a place of free enjoyment for all time:”
I enjoyed the sentiment and was grateful to Ms. Rosalie Butler, whoever she was. I was also particularly taken by the punctuation at the end of the inscription.
You see, there is no period at the end of “enjoyment for all time.” Instead, the inscription ends with a colon. I found this peculiar, so I did some research. Turns out, it could simply be indicative of the Victorian times, when monumental inscriptions often ended with a colon instead of a period. It was considered an ornamental flourish, sometimes seen at the end of formal stone proclamations. To my modern eye, however, it made the inscription appear unfinished, open ended.
“Free enjoyment for all time:” the colon begs the question: How can humans, in our impermanence, make this permanent guarantee of “for all time?”
Well, for starters, it takes great faith in the next generation, faith that we have taught them the significant lessons and instilled within them the right values to lead into the future.
That is very much Moses’ position in the Book of Deuteronomy. In just a few weeks, we will read of Moses’ death, the ultimate act of entrusting the Jewish future to the next generation. With Moses’ death, the Torah essentially ends with a “colon,” an unwritten future. It says, it’s your sacred obligation now. Don’t squander it.
Let us pray that our actions today will prescribe a future rooted in covenant: one in which we remember that the earth is God's, that every gift carries obligation, and that holiness is found not in claiming the earth, but in caring for it—and for all who dwell upon it.
