Dancing: Between Rainforest and Ice, a Journey to the Mountains of the Moon

In the African tropics, almost kissing the equator but standing tall enough to sport glaciers like a sneer, the Rwenzori Mountains loom.

It’s the absurdity that makes the eyes blink twice. Ice in the heat. Snow in the savannah. The whole experience is like nature took her organizational system and threw it in the air just to see what would emerge.

The mountains stare back at you, like the earth is saying, “Easy. You don’t know everything.” Which, let’s be honest? Is half the fun of being alive.

The ancient poets called the Nile’s source here, imagining the world’s greatest river bursting from snow. Prophets looked for secret lakes hidden in the mountain’s shadows. All felt something sacred tucked into those jagged quilts of ice and rock.

It turns out they were right—the Rwenzori are an external rendering of our internal terrain. Moist and jungle-wild at the base. Still and crystalline with ice at the summit. All of it breathing. All of it home.

Where the Lush Heart Roams

At the foot of the mountain, it’s like walking into a rainforest festival. Trees vault up to the sky like slow-motion skyscrapers. Ferns and moss curl into soft green throws. Orchids spiral like metaphors that won’t quiet the chatter and stop flirting with you.

There’s chatter all around, in a million different languages only nature understands.

This is the part of us that knows itself in Technicolor. The inner jungle. The part of our heart that skips when we’re laughing with our whole face. The instinct that leaps first and thinks later.

It’s the version of us that would absolutely say yes to dancing barefoot in the rain or follow a dragonfly down a trail just to see where it went because it feels like a quest.

It’s easy here. It’s warm. It’s home.

Where the Quiet Soul Stands Still

Higher up, though, the tone changes. The trees are thinner. The moss recedes. Everything sharpens. All the noise falls away, and suddenly the only thing left is wind and silence—the kind you can almost reach out and touch.

The summit is spare and stark and undeniably honest. The ice clings to the rock like old truths that won’t melt no matter how much fire they’ve been through. Up here, we meet the part of us that doesn’t talk much.

The part that likes to sit still. The part that’s okay with not knowing. It’s the altitude where we face the things we left in the woods. Slowness. Quiet. Breath.

It can be uncomfortable. But it’s also where clarity hits like a lightning bolt wearing snowshoes.

Holy, in One, Does Not Equal Holy, in the Other

Neither realm is sacred on its own. The forest is lush because the snow melts into it. The summit is sacred because the wild green below depends on it. Same with us. Our joy grows out of our sorrow. Our courage grows from our doubts. Our creativity grows from those weird silent places where nothing seems to be happening—until suddenly everything is.

Being human is the rainforest and the glacier. Curiosity and caution. Thunder and hush. All of it.

Walking Your Inner Trail

Walking through the different ecosystems of these mountains feels exactly like moving through the seasons of our own inner life. Some days we’re a walking jungle gym of emotion, swinging through ideas and possibilities like we can’t help but hatch twelve new dreams before breakfast.

Other days, we’re iced over and still, and our emotional landscape has been stripped to its essentials—the landmass equivalent of standing on a ridge with our breath frozen in our lungs because the whole world feels both breathtaking and painfully honest.

But both spaces serve. One gives color. The other gives perspective.

As Lao Tzu reminds us,

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“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”

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A little trail wind whispers: just loosen your grip. Your next becoming is already stretching its legs.

Fuel from the Forest, Roots in the Rain

And this is where wild awareness resonates—the forest bathing and trail roams that feel like prayers and the sitting and stretching in nature and the tiny rituals that make no sense except that they make total sense.

They feed the jungle. They keep us rooted. They nurture the emotional soil.

And when life kicks us up the mountain—grief, or loss, or self-doubt, or massive change, or just one of those “What the hell is going on?” seasons—that’s when the summit teaches us the clean lines of stillness. The clarity of pause. The bizarro comfort of cold, hard truth.

And when fog rolls in? When you can’t see the trail? When your inner GPS goes, “Lol, good luck”?

You keep moving anyway. Slow is fine. Crooked is fine. Barefoot is fine. Fog is temporary. Wild is permanent.

Where Rivers Are Born

I love that the Nile—the life-giver of life—has its origins in silence and snow. What a cosmic joke. What a brilliant metaphor. So many of our great rivers begin in the quietest, coldest places inside us. Creativity. Courage. Compassion.

They are born in our stillness, in our breath, in those moments where we feel like nothing is happening… and then suddenly everything is flowing.

Rainforest and summit are not goals. They are rhythms. States of being. We swing between them like moon phases, swelling in some seasons and shedding in others. Both are holy. Both are needed.

So wherever you are today—lush or frozen, blooming or drifting—it’s all part of your inner mountain.

Keep climbing.

Keep blooming.

Keep wandering through your rainforest of green, gray, and gold.

Cheers!

Kether

Spunky Mind

"No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place."

-Zen proverb

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