Storytelling brings the mountains to life

By Kate Lutz

The rolling green hills of Wisconsin shaped my childhood. The land was soft, green, lush, and generously sprinkled with spring-fed blue lakes. Lingering summer sunsets splashed a red glow on the horizon. I loved Wisconsin colors, but Colorado called my name. With children and furniture packed into a U-haul, I headed west to the land the tourism ad called “Colorful Colorado.” I imagined a Crayola box land with 128 fresh colors.

The Colorado that greeted me was brown. Where were the colors? The softness? Instead of rolling hills, huge rocks were piled high into the clouds. I wanted the purple mountains majesty, not a jagged landscape. I expected a different land. Gradually, the mountains tugged at me, simultaneously intimidating and enticing. I began dreaming of climbing mountains and wondered about the stories wedged in the valleys. The mountains hooked me.

As a professional storyteller, when I create a program on mountain lore, I try to combine personal experience, a historical event— frequently with a survival tone, a topographical feature story, and an animal story. Through my program, I try to capture the emotional feel of the mountains: rough, dangerous, magnificent, challenging, exhausting, powerful, inspiring, alluring. Every culture has tales that celebrate as well as try to explain wild places.

The mountains are a harsh land with survival tales that include pioneers stranded by early winter storms, first recorded peak ascents, firefighters trapped by an out-of-control wildfire, and snowboarders caught in an avalanche. In our fast food restaurant–, instant gratification–world, we are fascinated by Colorado’s infamous Alferd Packer, who allegedly survived a mountain winter by eating his companions. (The University of Colorado at Boulder has an Alferd Packer Grill). My personal experiences pale by comparison because I have never almost-died, but I have struggled up a mountain pass, groped blindfolded along a shear rock face, and stood silent when a bear darted across my path. I do not share these stories for scare value or the bravado of survival, but to reveal the soul of a mountain through the experiences of people who travel there.

The face of a mountain consists of rocks, trees, streams, lakes, and even sand dunes; but these combine to create unique mountain topography. The voice of a rock might be Pele, the Hawaiian fire/volcano goddess: “She-who-makes-land.” In an aboriginal tale, a father turns his daughters into a stone butte to protect them from a flesh-devouring monster. Then the father roams the land looking for the lost bone to reverse their transformation.

In a Czech folk tale, a thunderstorm signifies that the devil is getting married. Thunder is drums being beaten and lightning the sparks from dancing cloven hooves. It is all devilish merriment as unique as the thunder-snow—a situation in which snow, thunder, and lightning simultaneously engulf a mountain. Through giving personality to a wild landscape, I invite an audience to see the living, breathing nature of a mountain.

Although the mountains are filled with animals, bears seem to command a preeminent place in mountain lore, from the teddy bear, named for Teddy Roosevelt after an unsuccessful Western hunting expedition, to the grizzlies lurking in the Alaskan mountains. Young children love to hear how the bear lost his tail, and everyone needs practical information about how to co-exist with a bear—who wants to eat the candy bar in a person’s pocket much more than it wants to munch the person.

Mountain lore is a composite of people, places, and critters set in a world that draws us in with stop-and-stare beauty while walling us out with harsh terrain and climate. I want my stories to entertain, to take people on an imaginary mountain journey. But I also hope that afterwards someone might be more inclined to take jacket, water, and raingear on a mountain trail. P