notbecauseofvictories:

It was genuinely disquieting to me how whenever you turn around, you could see the mountains. Maybe it’s just because I had stereotypical American decadence on the brain–I mean, it was Vegas—but I kept thinking of the T.J. Eckleburg billboard from the Great Gatsby, but how the mountains are much, much older, and distinctly inhuman. Also, there’s something horribly Biblical about mountains, especially when they overlook cities full of Sin™….that wrath from high atop the thing requires a high thing, and looming over a sere, flat plain, the mountains of Las Vegas look like they qualify. 

I kept thinking that that they were a reminder, that however glittering this neon Babel—whatever atoms man split in the desert wastes below—this too would pass, all would pass, and the mountains would still be there. They would sit in judgment, still.

Whereas the Smoky Mountains don’t sit in judgment. They don’t loom. They run along the land, under it, and swell towards crags and peaks and curves; they are the land. They inspire awe, rather than terror. You have to respect the Smokies, certainly—almost 500 people have died in the park since it opened, and the Little River Lumber Company’s death doll no doubt adds to that number—but if you approach it with respect, the Smokies seem to open up, to unfold in invitation. There are waterfalls and pockets of green, cool shade, hidden deer tracks and plant life of a hundred kinds to study.

If the mountains outside of Vegas are the harshest, most absolute sort of god, a profoundly alien and absolutist justice, then the Smoky Mountains are the closest thing I’ve known to a goddess—not any smaller, or more human, but engulfing and green and very holy.