ORIGINAL: FROM MAMMA SORTINIS

A friend of mine is a landscape photographer. She told me about an underrated spot in my town, across the street from a popular local restaurant. Looking across the train tracks and farm land, Mount Rainier takes on a gentle maternal quality in the evening. "Majesty" is the word that comes to mind, and evokes in me a profound sense of awe and wonder--the notion that these enormous monuments to beauty existed eons before human beings emerged to appreciate and contemplate them. Her majesty is her own.