The Mountain Broker

“For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, `Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you."  Jesus (Matthew 17:20)

My earliest memory is gazing at a mountain.  For the first five years of my life, my family lived at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains in Los Gatos, California.  From the front yard I could see the forested north flanks of Loma Prieta.  I can still feel the awe I felt as I stared at it.

We moved to the flat Midwest for the next eight years.  In the summers, we’d travel from Ohio to California to visit family.  I’ll never recover from the thrill of first seeing the hazy blue outline of the Rocky Mountains as we drove west.  When we finally moved back to California, we settled on the south side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and I spent my teenage years wandering joyfully and freely among them.

Such were the origins of my career as a mountain broker.  My job is to arrange the delivery of mountains to places where they are needed.  Where life has gone horizontal, my job is to bring the vertical.  Where the soul is at a low, I bring uplift.  Where there are no high points of inspiration, I tell mountains to move there.

Mind you, I'm a mountain broker, not a mountain mover.  I just connect those who need the mountains with the Mover who can deliver them.  An important part of my job is to help the client find the mountain that meets his or her requirements.  Are oak-studded hills adequate to the task?  - easy to climb, yet still enough to lift the gaze and the mood?  Or is the need for awe so strong that jagged, snow-capped peaks are in order?  - challenging the body and the imagination?  Is a stark, vertiginous desert range needed to shed the soul of entrapping attachments?  Or is a tall, verdant mountain needed to catch clouds and pour down rain to wash away all that stains the heart?  Once I'm clear with the client about the uplift that is needed, together, through faith, we call upon the Mover to move it from there to here. 

My mountain brokerage career has taken many forms.  For a while I did it in churches, helping parishioners move mountains.  For a while I did it while being a community organizer and social service agency director, helping homeless and other low-income people move mountains.  For a while now, I've been doing it through religious work in a university, helping students find higher ground. 

On my days off and on vacations, I take hikes in the mountains to get a first-hand look at the inventory for my clients.  There are plenty of good ones still available.  For people lacking direction in life, I recommend Baboquivari Mountain in southern Arizona.  I was there last March with a group of students on a border justice service-learning experience.  Baboquivari is a monstrous vertical plug of stone which is used by undocumented immigrants to find their way from Mexico into America.  For people who need to get calm and centered, I recommend Simi Mountain here in southern California.  It's right on the border of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties.  From below, it looks like a peak, but I discovered it is more of a high ridge surrounding a beautiful little valley of grassy fields and oak trees: a world apart from the metropolis so nearby.  For those for whom life has gone dry, I recommend Mt. San Jacinto at Palm Springs.  From afar to the east, it is a gigantic wall of barren stones.  But hiking to its base, you find hidden falls of cold, crystal water tumbling around palm trees - meltwater from the snows far above.  For people who need creative inspiration, I recommend Sandstone Mountain in the Santa Monica Mountains.  At 3100 feet, it's the highest in the range.  And because it is higher and set apart from the rest of the range, it has a unique flora and fauna - flowers and butterflies I've seen nowhere else.

Do you need to think bigger and aim higher?  Who ya gonna call? 

But here's a little secret: I'm happy to help, but I really haven't done my job till I've helped you find your own inner mountain Mover.  With a little speck of your own faith, and a little fleck of your own fanciful imagination, you can find your own heights!