Beach or mountains? Which do you prefer? Why?

Beach or Mountains? The Eternal Question With No Clean Answer

Filed from Somewhere Between the Trees and Whatever Ghosts Follow Me

There’s an old, warped question people like to toss around at parties or in those strange pockets of silence on a long drive: Beach or mountains? Like you’re supposed to pick one with the same certainty you pick a coffee order. As if it’s a neat little personality test, saltwater or pine needles, sunscreen or cold wind, sand in your shoes or dirt under your nails.

But life’s never been that simple, and neither have I.

My old man worshiped the ocean like it was some half-wild deity. Always dragging us to the coast, always telling stories that sounded like they were written by shipwreck survivors and longshoremen with too many miles behind them. The man could stand on a beach and look more at home than he ever did anywhere else. He loved the roar of the surf, the endless horizon, that great heaving lungs-of-the-earth feeling the Pacific gives off.

And hell, I get it. I really do.

But the beach…

The beach feels like walking into a memory with the edges still sharp.

It’s not that I dislike the ocean. I love it in that guilty, reluctant way you love something that hurts to look at. The smell of salt hits my nose and suddenly I’m ten years old again, watching him standing at the water’s edge, hands on his hips, grinning like he owned the damn coastline. The waves roll in and crash, and each one feels like a reminder of something I’m still not ready to unpack.

So I drift inland.

Toward the mountains.

Toward the deep forests where the wind sounds like an old friend instead of a ghost.

The mountains don’t demand anything from me. They don’t tug at old wounds or stir up grief I’ve spent years trying to sift through. The woods just let me exist, camera slung around my neck, boots crunching pine needles, air cold enough to wake the soul but not cold enough to crack it open. Out there, you don’t need explanations. You don’t need to be okay. You just breathe.

Maybe that’s why I keep ending up in the places where the trees swallow the sunlight and the ridgelines carve the sky into jagged pieces. The mountains are honest. Brutal sometimes, sure, but honest. They make no promises. They don’t pretend to heal you. They just give you the space to figure out why the hell you’re still carrying the things you’re carrying.

The beach…

The beach already knows too much about me.

So which do I prefer?

Give me the mountains.

Give me the cold dawn air and the dirt roads that never seem to end.

Give me the silent companions of cedar and stone, places where the ghosts don’t talk quite as loud.

Maybe one day I’ll sit on the shore again without feeling like the ocean is trying to pull memories out of me. Maybe I’ll learn to look at the waves without feeling that familiar ache.

But for now?

I head for the high country.

Not because it’s better.

But because it’s where I can breathe without the past demanding a conversation I’m not ready to have.