Driving on the road from Sinaia to Azuga, through the valley dug by the Prahova river, one may observe, by glancing on his left side, the eastern wall of the Bucegi mountains. In particular, as the road approaches Bușteni, the top of this wall reveals a huge (albeit small from that particular perspective) cross standing atop a peak called the Caraiman. Conversely, from the same peak, behind the small cabin, or the cross itself, one may admire in all its beauty the valley housing the townlet of Bușteni, as well as historical landmarks such as Cantacuzino's palace.
I myself have lost track of all the times I've travelled through the Prahova valley; yet each time, without exception, I stand in awe of Nature's grand monument, The Mountain, which I couldn't quite begin describing in words without turning them into a string of platitudes.
Yet conversely, I have stood on the shoulders of this Mountain as well: I've seen Bușteni from Caraiman; just as well as I've climbed the Sphinx, or the Omu peak, neighbouring the deep glacial valleys and the bottomless chasms; as well as I've slept at the multitude of small cabins, whether hidden behind piles of snow in the early spring, or otherwise too accessible nowadays to the devices of pretend-civilization. I've been housed by shepherds while weathering a storm; and I've met their dogs' barks and the bleating cries of their sheep with joy, after hours of journeying through the mountain roads. I may not have done all these nearly as often as I wished too, yet still, The Mountain remains a friend of sorts, for it provides me with much that is otherwise non-existent within the shallow confines of this pretend-civilization.
It is said, I don't recall by whom, that in one's journey towards understanding some particular thing, one should seek as many and as diverse perspectives as possible. This may be so; I for one am not particularly fond of wandering through the forests, inspecting the dust with a microscope in hand; nor do I find the airplane perspective -- which I've seen several times as well, by the way -- all that interesting. In between these, however, there's a wide range of things to look at and quite a bunch of places to view them from, and the humble list in my previous paragraph barely covers scraps of the whole experience. Which whole, as they say, is far more than the sum of its individual parts.
I guess the bottom line is that despite its awe-inspiring heights, The Mountain is not really... insurmountable, at the end of the day. Just make sure not to get stuck in local maxima.
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