Congratulations Gay Mountaineer!

Mountain high school is a hellish place, lasting millions of years. And then mountains finally get out and find that the world is better than high school, sure, but that people are still pretty shallow, especially when it comes to mountains. Don’t believe us? Listen to “America the Beautiful” and how it’s all about ragging on the “majesty of purple mountains.” It gets better, but it’s never easy to be a gay mountain in America.

As a student of geology, you know all this already. You know how the tectonic plates have been shifting about and how mountains are lonely at the best of times and extremely lonely when they’ve had adolescences that consisted of a slough of unfair dehumanizing experiences that no one should ever have to deal with. But today you’re going to start doing something about it.

You’re going to load up your Prius with camping gear, tie up a Swiss Seat and piton your way up Mount Monadnock, arguably the gayest mountain in North America, definitely the gayest one in the United States (Mount Saint Helens is a close second). You’re going to spend the better part of a day scaling its faces and making sure it feels like a nice, important mountain and then, as the sun begins to set over its majestic apex you’re going to sit at the peak with an open bottle of wine and a joint and whisper to the mountain.

“Hey. I love you for being you.” Then you’re gonna kiss it. With your tongue. And it’s gonna be hot.

The mountain will shudder a little. Scientists the world over will be flabbergasted by this turn of events, but you and the mountain will know the truth of the matter: that Mount Monadnock experienced profound acceptance, and that you had a direct hand in it.

In a few years they’ll figure out just what happened through a combination of core sampling and seismological readings. The book you’ll publish “Climbing the Gayest Peaks,” will also help a lot. And then geologists will break out their findings, positing that we, as a society, need to be more accepting and nurturing of these mountains.

Earthquakes will decrease by sixty percent everywhere in the world except the South.

Congratulations Gay Mountaineer!