Resembling a Mountain

Seven years and ten months ago, my mother and father moved my two sisters and me into our Calabasas home.  I was less than thrilled at the idea of putting all of my beloved possessions in the hands of a truck-driving stranger.  That wasn’t the sole reason for being opposed to the move; the new house boasted of such splendid features as a smaller backyard, no skylight in the kitchen, a very shallow pool, and a whole myriad of other shortcomings making it hardly comparable to our old house.  With backpack, jacket, and reluctant curiosity in hand, I found quickly how misplaced my antipathy was.
To say that the backyard was small isn’t totally accurate; there was about enough living space, enough for a small table and some chairs, but just beyond where the patio ended, an enormous hill suddenly happened.  The very base of it had been removed so that there would be some room for a patio, so the hill started about four feet up, at the top of a small brick wall.  It was a jungle of mystery and adventure, and access to its secrets was not readily granted, due to the wall and an overgrowth of plants.  It was my hill; only I had energy, drive, and youthful curiosity enough to brave the climb over the wall.  My hill shot up in to the sky, perfectly perpendicular to the ground for exactly my height, then gradually it leveled out after about five more minutes of heading upward, where it abruptly stopped in front of a gate.  The very top of the hill was separated from my property by the Thompson’s chain-link fence.  They lived at the address atop my sacred mountain.  I found them to be very social people; every Saturday, the sweet smell of barbeque sauce and a variety of cooked foods would waft down from the hill’s summit, filling my nose with its intoxicating smell and my stomach with imagined tastes.  The rest of my being was taken by thoughts of how much fun everyone up at the party was having.  I judged the Thompsons good people for their social nature and deemed them worthy of inhabiting the top of my hill… even if I never did get invited to their weekend parties.
But the top is the smallest part of a mountain, so I could still claim ownership to almost all of it… along with the few squirrels who inhabited it and our four dogs who would occasionally chase after those squirrels, for fear that they might permanently change the face of the hillside by taking up residence in a tree and eating all of its fruit.  And, of course, my parents legally owned it.  But ignoring all of that, the hill was mine and mine alone.  The flowers that cascaded like a waterfall until the sudden drop to our patio moved in the wind when I told them to.  The always happy and talkative birds sang merrily from whichever tree I desired.  The plants gleefully cleared a path for me when I wished to climb.  In light of all that, how could my parents claim to own that hill?  Most of their time was occupied by thinking up schemes of how to not do anything with it.  The hill was left for me alone.
When I asked if we could buy the house atop the hill in addition to keeping our own, both of my parents laughed.  My dad asked, “What would you do with it?”  This confused me for quite some time.  What do you do with a hill?  Nothing.  You climb on it, but aside from that you mostly just let it be.  It’s there to be there, not for your personal use.  So, the top remained just out of my reach, but I still had the rest of it.  From the very edge of our property, as close to the top as I could get, I could see the sun set every day at a different time, if only different by a half of a second.  
Anytime I thought some exciting thing might change the great hill, nature’s course of change was foiled by my quick-to-act parents.  A small fire started when a lamp fell onto the hillside, but it met shortly with the hose.  The “unseemly” tree that sprouted in the exact middle of the hill fell to the gardener’s saw.  Anything that would change its beauty was stopped before something of any grand consequence happened.  Eventually, this inevitably made the unchanging mountain lose its intrigue.  I explored every inch of it, and there was nothing yet to find, but there would never be any more.
Though I loved it then, and an echo of that affection remains in my heart today, I’ve not climbed the mysterious mountain recently.  Its face hasn’t changed in the three years since last I braved its heights; upon seeing a loss of interest on my part, my parents decided it best to isolate the hill by erecting a fence.  This would prevent the dogs from getting bitten by spiders and small rodents hiding among the always overgrown plant life.  The squirrels left, too, because they no longer had any loud and persistent quadrupeds to target with rotting apples.  The Thompsons, I believe, moved out, for I can no longer find the sounds of happiness and smells of bliss.  Without warning, Mt. Olympus became the hill of Sisyphus, now daunting and cruel with its rampantly growing population of spiders and rats.
Every morning, I’m reminded of the never-ending conformity when I look out my bedroom window.  Since I took up residence in this room, I’ve always seen the hill at day’s beginning, and I always see the same hillside at nightfall.  My view of it never changes, but only because it never changes itself.  That, of course, is half the problem; though my parents discouraged its growing, the main reason the hill doesn’t change is that it lacks the will to do so.  Its spirit conquered, it will never grow as big as the mountains that seal it in this valley, or even the fence that seals it in this property.