A mountain can grow in the mind into a living personality

Evidence

By sunlight or moonlight its splintered grey crest is the one object which, in spite of wapiti and bighorn, skunk and grizzly, unfailingly arrests the eyes. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the forked lightnings play round its head like a glory. It is one of the noblest of mountains, but in one’s imagination it grows to be much more than a mountain. It becomes invested with a personality. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 103

Categorization

• XREF: Mountains personified as characters echo the sublime-landscape tradition from Romantic nature writing (e.g., Muir, Ruskin) of treating landforms as sentient presences. — connects to: Rocky Mountain alpine scenery rendered sublime, silent beauty worth dwelling on — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 106; Mountain dawns transform the landscape into transcendent beauty that defies words — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 111; Landscape beings raise a person into their sense of place and world — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 83 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Isolation makes benign mountains swell into impassable psychological barriers #exemplifies (0.86) — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 227
• Landscape beings raise a person into their sense of place and world #expands (0.82) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 83
• Landscape ‘raising’ a person blends literal nurture with spiritual teaching #expands (0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 82
• Personality arises from consciousness’s reflective self-presence, not from the Ego #complicates (0.78)
• The unconscious mind is an inner wilderness hosting impersonal, dream-roaming presences #qualifies (0.76) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 439