Land

People portray their land. The mountains are always clouded, you cannot see far, and they are cluttered. People of the mountains can look as far as the nearest tree, and betond that, vision is impaired. As the shores collapse on you at one side, the mountains tower above you on another. Everyone is climbing for their own good, their own will to survive. Breathing is harder the higher you reach. Your judgment is clouded and you disperse into overwhelming thoughts that you have failed your climb to selfish success. Your few ill-equipped teammates drag you down. You've yet to acclimatize to their constant pulling on your strings, their need for your space, their thirst for your time and energy.
You summit. For a moment in time, you stand ethereal, like the great peak on which you rest. Your body aches and groans, but you grow with the knowledge that you are living and breathing and hurting. Yes, for a moment, you see beyond what you know.
Over the mountain there is another kind of land and people. Breaking out from the west, an expanse lies before you, and the skies are clear. Save a few dry trees and broken fences, there are no flaws in the landscape, and nothing is hidden from sight except the rolling hills, too far for our eyes to see. The people are like their land. They hide nothing. The bitter cold and the blazing hot are directly connected with their need to produce life, to sustain generations, to build red roads leading to higher glories. The land is plain and the horizons are broad. The people think not merely on the now, but the eventual someday. The land will see another spring. It always does. As earnestly they broke, years before, what they value most, they learned the reality of what the weather can bring. They respected the higher power. They embraced it. They do not fear it. Their plain look on black thunderheads, which would be your doomsday, is a shrug and a firm planting of the feet. If it takes them down, none can stand against it.
You, walking beyond your foothills, find the expanse clearing to your mind. You can breath again. You can speak again. For a little while, you embrace the greatness of emptiness. You lift your head to the hot sun. Let it bake you like it has the mud on your boots, but when the shear howling wind seems to roar in your ears and the amber waves seem to swallow you up, you wish to take your lead feet and run for the highlands. You reach for something near to cling to, a bough to cushion your blow. Every emblem of your green sea is a reminder of home, of the cleaning sensation a shower can bring, the pleasure of a cool sun. You remember that you are the person of your land.
Much is learned from the expanse, and the People are like their lands, you know. Yet as you see your great cliffs standing defiantly above you, and you feel your green grass, cooling your burns, you realize you are like your land, heavy with deep forests and tall peeks. You will stand tall. You will cool wounds. You will reach for the heavens, ever wanting more.