“Well, that’s a view,” Nick said as we came over the crest of the hill. Before us was the farmland I had seen every day on my way home from school, with mountains huddled around its edge.

“Yep,” I replied. I was tired. 

“Have you climbed any of those mountains?” It was a weird question to me, like asking someone with a beard if they’d shaved that morning. 

“No.” Should I have? 

“What! Why not? That’s the first thing I would do!” I hoped he didn’t think something was wrong with me. I shrugged. I didn’t know why I had not climbed any of those mountains. I don’t think I had ever once in my life considered climbing any of those mountains. Nick laughed behind his tortoise shell Ray Bans. The Shins were playing over the car stereo. “Man, when I was a kid, we’d climb every mountain we laid eyes on. ‘Let’s climb that mountain over there’ we’d say, and we’d do it. Of course, we never made it to the top, but we’d try.” He grinned. Nick was a gentleman, and the only other person I knew at school who smoked a pipe, besides myself.  

His anecdote struck me, though I still had no desire to climb any of those mountains. We’re surrounded by mountains every day; opportunities to do something fun and out of the ordinary. Adventures, I hear folks call them. I don’t believe I have many adventures. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there, waiting for me to notice them. Perhaps I should start climbing mountains. Not real ones, I don’t think I would be very good at that. Hypothetical ones will do, for now.