I woke up one recent morning to find our front yard had sprouted a mountain.

I mean, one day, the space immediately leading to our front door was a flat, weed-infested wasteland awaiting emergency landscaping, and the next, Mount Everest had appeared. 

I have been accused in the past of making mountains out of molehills, but this is a really big pile of dirt.

As with everything else associated with our addition/remodel from hell, I was assured Mt. Fuji would not be in our front yard for long, that it was destined to be spread out around the front and back yards, eventually to become the basis for a lush garden. 

That was long enough ago for our mini-Kilimanjaro to begin sprouting vegetation of an unknown variety. I guess the good news there is that would seem to be an indication that the stuff may actually support life, unlike the dirt currently under and around our house, which really doesn’t. 

We’ve been informed that most of the dirt around our house, and those of our neighbors, was imported there when the freeway came through nearby, and contains stuff that immediately strangles the life out of anything that grows. 

So far, this has proven to be true. 

No one knows the long-term effect on pets or humans, but I guess that’s an issue for another day.

But the fact that nothing seems to want to grow could be because the dirt upon which our neighborhood was built isn’t Earth at all, but Mars or Jupiter or some other alien stuff that just bears a passing resemblance to dirt. There’s also, admittedly, a slight chance that nothing grows in our yard due to operator error. No one knows. This new dirt should prove it one way or the other, eventually. 

In any case, our own personal Alp now hides untold numbers and types of hideous creatures and leaves me with the disquieting feeling that it could break loose and entomb in the house at any moment. 

I’d like to be able to ignore it, but it’s like trying to ignore the Himalayas.  

One must hire a sherpa and outfit pack animals to get from one end of the yard to the other or from the street to the front porch these days. No one has attempted to scale the thing, yet, which is probably the only reason we’re all still living. One of the neighbor’s dogs is missing, though, and may never be recovered.

There are some positive aspects of living in the shade of our own, private Mt. McKinley. It is, in fact, providing shade. It’s got to be a deterrent to would-be burglars, who are, at least around our area, not likely used to packing their rock climbing gear along with their break-in kits. 

It hides the fact that our yard resembles nothing so much as an abandoned lot, lacking only the discarded tires and broken furniture to make it the perfect example of what not to allow to happen to a front yard. 

And I’ve taken up the ancient art of yodeling, so I can be heard across the wide expanse of Zrihen Mountain. 

If it’s still there in winter, perhaps we can rent a snow machine and practice skiing. Come to think of it, Mt. Zrihen may be tall enough to actually get snow the natural way. 

Meanwhile, I’m keeping an eye on it, just in case. This is earthquake country, after all.

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