What Mount Washington Teaches Us About Control

Last week, I went to see my therapist, and somehow we ended up talking about the absurdity of life.

I do not remember exactly how we got there, which feels about right. Therapy has a way of starting in one place and walking you quietly into the middle of something much bigger. He had been reading a book, though I cannot remember the title or the author, and he was talking about this idea that there is an aspect of life that is simply absurd. It does not make sense. It is chaotic and random and out of our control. It just is.

I think that is one of the harder truths for me to accept.

Every day, in one way or another, I think I am trying to create some kind of order in my life. I do not think that makes me unusual. I think that is what most of us are doing. We are all trying to find meaning, purpose, structure, and some small sense of control because it is painful and scary to believe there might not be any control at all.

And I do think we have some. We can control how we show up. We can control what we give our attention to. We can control what we build, how we respond, and whether we keep trying to become more honest versions of ourselves.

But we do not control the weather. We do not control other people. We do not control timing, loss, change, or the strange turns that alter the shape of a life before we even realize what is happening. We can mainly control ourselves, and even that feels questionable some days.

What I have been trying to understand is how acceptance might make room for peace. Not the kind of acceptance that gives up, but the kind that stops fighting reality long enough to breathe. The kind that says, yes, life is absurd. Yes, it is chaotic. Yes, there are things I will never be able to manage into submission. And maybe I can loosen my grip a little because of that.

That idea makes sense to me. It also feels incredibly hard.

This week, I had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Peter Crane on North of Normal. Peter is with the Mount Washington Observatory, and his life has revolved around that mountain for decades. He first visited Mount Washington as a teenager in 1969, worked there as a weather observer, spent years with the Appalachian Mountain Club, and now serves as curator of the Observatory’s historical collection.

I loved thinking about that. A life circling back again and again to one place. A mountain becoming not just scenery, but a kind of center.

When I think back to the first time I laid eyes on Mount Washington, I still remember the feeling more than the exact details. It was either January or February of 2019, and my brother and I were driving up Route 302 into Bethlehem. We came up the hill, and suddenly there it was. Mount Washington, with Jefferson and Adams beside it. I remember being in awe, but more than that, I remember feeling grounded.

It felt like certainty.

I do not say that lightly. I have never felt more certain in my life than I did in that moment. I saw the mountain, and I felt called to live here. Immediately.

I have always been drawn to mountains. Whenever I think about where I want to travel, I am not usually searching for a beach. I want ridgelines, valleys, and something steady in the distance. When I lived in Ecuador, which was probably the most chaotic place I have ever lived, the mountains were the steadiest presence around me. Of course, some of them were volcanoes, and one of them did erupt while I was there, so apparently even my symbols of stability come with a little drama.

Still, they were there.

I think that is what Mount Washington does for me now. Even with the weather, and maybe because of the weather, there is something predictable about the fact that it is unpredictable. We know it will be unpredictable up there. That is its own strange kind of certainty. I can wake up, go outside, and know the mountain will be there all day. It will be there tomorrow. Some days I can see it clearly. Some days it is covered in clouds. Some days it disappears completely from view, but I know it has not moved.

There is something about that steady presence that offers certainty and hope in the middle of absurdity.

And yet, the more I learn about Mount Washington, the more I understand that its steadiness is not the same thing as safety.

That is where Peter’s stories matter.

During our conversation, he talked about William Curtis and Allan Ormsbee, two experienced hikers who started up the Crawford Path on June 30, 1900, to attend an Appalachian Mountain Club meeting at the Summit House hotel on Mount Washington.

They were not careless beginners. Curtis was known as “The Father of American Amateur Athletics,” and Ormsbee was also strong and fit. These were men who understood physical effort and endurance. They knew something about challenge.

The weather that day was harsh. Cold, wind, fog, sleet, and freezing rain met them on the ridge. Curtis fell near Mount Monroe and died there. Ormsbee continued upward, likely trying to get help, and came painfully close to the summit before he died too. His body was later found a few hundred feet below the top.

A few hundred feet.

That is the detail that stays with me. The closeness of it. The heartbreak of almost making it. The reminder that proximity is not the same as arrival.

After their deaths, the hiking community had to confront a difficult question. If something like this could happen to two strong, experienced hikers, what about everyone else? The following year, the Appalachian Mountain Club built the Crawford Path Refuge, a small emergency shelter on the open ridge south of Mount Washington. It was not built for comfort. It was built because tragedy had revealed a need.

It was marked as “Not for Pleasure Camping,” which is almost funny in the most human way possible, because of course people stayed there anyway. Even after all that, people still wanted to be close to the mountain.

That is the part I keep turning over in my mind.

We know the mountain can be dangerous, and still we are pulled toward it. We know it does not care about our plans, our strength, our timelines, or our desire to make it to the top, and still we keep looking at it, climbing it, studying it, photographing it, writing about it, and trying to understand it.

Maybe that is why I have become so drawn to the stories of people connected to Mount Washington. It is not morbid, at least not to me. It feels like trying to understand the thread that runs between all of us who have felt pulled toward that place. The people who worked there. The people who dreamed about it. The people who studied it. The people who rescued others from it. The people who died there. The people, like Peter, who have dedicated so much of their lives to making sure the stories are not lost.

People call Mount Washington "The Rock Pile", and on one level, that is all it is. A pile of rocks. A very dramatic pile of rocks with weather issues and a long history of humbling people. But over time, its meaning keeps growing. It keeps expanding. It keeps touching more lives.

During our conversation, Peter said we have to be humble. He talked about how there are some conditions the mountain is simply not going to let you succeed in.

That is true on Mount Washington.

It is also true in life.

There are some conditions we cannot force our way through. There are some storms where strength is not enough. There are some moments when the brave thing is not to keep pushing toward the summit, but to turn around. There are some times when the best thing we can do is admit that the mountain gets a say.

Maybe that is part of what acceptance is.

It is not pretending chaos does not exist. It is not giving up on meaning. It is not deciding that because life is absurd, nothing matters. It is realizing that control was never the same thing as safety, and certainty was never the same thing as peace.

Maybe peace comes from knowing what is ours to carry and what is not. We can build the shelter, but we cannot stop the storm. We can tell the story, but we cannot undo the loss. We can prepare, pay attention, and move with humility, but we do not get to command the mountain.

For some reason, I find comfort in that.

Mount Washington does not make life less chaotic. It does not explain the absurdity. It does not soften itself so we can feel more powerful than we are. It simply stands there, honest and unmoving, reminding us that beauty and danger can exist in the same place.

Tomorrow morning, if the clouds allow it, I will look outside and see Mount Washington.

It will still be there.

And maybe that is enough to help me loosen my grip, just a little.

-Amanda

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