I spent thirty-one days in a rented cabin at the base of the Dachstein massif last winter. No Wi-Fi. No television. Just me, a stack of books I never touched, and mountains that have stood for 200 million years.
The first week nearly broke me.
I'd wake at dawn to the same view: the Dachstein's limestone face catching first light, turning from grey to gold to white. The same peaks. The same silence. My mind screamed for stimulation, for novelty, for anything that moved or changed or demanded my attention. But the mountains just stood there, indifferent to my discomfort.
That indifference taught me more than any meditation app or self-help book ever could.
The Weight of Staying Still
We don't know how to be still anymore. I certainly didn't.
Before my month in the Salzkammergut, I'd convinced myself I was good at solitude. I'd take walks. I'd sit in cafes alone. But that wasn't stillness—that was just being alone while surrounded by movement. Other people. Traffic. The hum of espresso machines. The promise that if I got bored, I could leave.
The mountains offered no such escape hatch.
On day three, I counted how many times I reached for my phone before remembering I had no signal. Forty-seven times. By 2 PM. My hand would drift to my pocket with the autonomy of a nervous tic, seeking that little dopamine hit, that connection to a world that moved and changed and needed me.
The Dachstein didn't need me. It had witnessed the Roman Empire rise and fall. It had stood through the Napoleonic Wars, through both World Wars, through the birth and death of empires I'd never heard of. My anxiety about missing emails seemed cosmically absurd in that context.
But knowing something is absurd doesn't make the feeling go away. That's what the first week taught me. The mountains didn't cure my restlessness through some mystical osmosis. They just refused to participate in it.
What Happens When Nothing Happens
Around day eight, something shifted. Not dramatically. Not in a way I could pinpoint to a specific moment.
I started noticing things I'd looked at but never seen. The way snow accumulates differently on north-facing slopes versus south-facing ones. How the light at 7 AM in January hits the peaks at a completely different angle than at 7:30 AM, creating shadows that reshape the entire mountain face. The specific sound of wind moving through pine trees versus the sound of wind across bare rock.
These weren't profound observations. They were just... observations. But they required a kind of attention I'd forgotten existed.
The attention we give things when we're not waiting for them to entertain us.
Mountains as Witnesses
There's a specific trail I walked almost daily, winding up from Hallstatt toward the Echerntal valley. The path itself is ancient—parts of it date back to salt mining operations from the Bronze Age. People have walked this exact route for 3,000 years.
Think about that. Three thousand years of human footsteps, and the mountains barely noticed.
I'd pass the same rock formations every day. One in particular, a limestone outcrop shaped vaguely like a hunched figure, became a kind of marker for me. Halfway point. Time to turn around if I wanted to be back before dark.
That rock had been there when Celts first settled the region around 800 BC. It watched Roman soldiers march through. It saw the medieval salt trade that made Hallstatt wealthy. It stood silent through the plague, through famines, through the industrialization that nearly destroyed the town's traditional way of life.
And it would be there long after I left. Long after everyone I know dies. Long after the languages we speak become extinct.
The Comfort of Insignificance
You'd think that would feel depressing. It didn't.
There's something deeply freeing about recognizing your own smallness in the face of geological time. Not smallness in the sense of worthlessness—smallness in the sense of proportion. My problems didn't disappear. But they took on a different weight when I held them up against 200 million years of limestone formation.
The career anxiety that had driven me to the mountains in the first place? Still there. But when I walked past rocks that had witnessed the rise and fall of entire civilizations, my fear of making the wrong professional choice seemed less like a life-or-death decision and more like... a choice. One of many. One that mattered, yes, but one that the universe would continue spinning through regardless of which path I picked.
This wasn't nihilism. It was perspective.
Learning to Listen to Silence
Silence isn't actually silent. That's the first thing you learn when you spend real time in it.
The mountains are full of sound. Wind. Water moving under ice. The crack of trees adjusting to temperature changes. The distant sound of rockfall—small stones breaking free from faces that are slowly, imperceptibly crumbling.
But these sounds don't demand anything from you. They don't require response or interpretation. They just are.
By week three, I'd stopped trying to fill the silence. I'd brought a journal with the intention of writing profound thoughts about nature and solitude. I wrote maybe five entries total. Most days, I just sat. Walked. Looked. Listened.
The urge to document everything, to turn every experience into content, started to fade. What would I even say? "Looked at mountain today. Still there." The mountains didn't need my commentary. They didn't need me to assign them meaning or extract lessons from them.
They just needed me to shut up and pay attention.
The Rhythm of Unchanging Things
Here's what surprised me: the mountains do change. Just not on human timescales.
A geologist I met at a café in Hallstatt (during one of my weekly trips down for supplies) explained that the Dachstein is still rising. About one millimeter per year. The African and Eurasian tectonic plates are still pushing against each other, still building the Alps, still reshaping the earth's crust.
One millimeter. Per year.
That's the kind of patience we can't comprehend. We measure change in days, weeks, quarters. The mountains measure it in millennia.
But that slow change is still change. The peaks that seem eternal are actually temporary—just temporary on a timescale that makes our entire species a footnote. In another 100 million years, these mountains will be worn down to hills. In 200 million years, they might be gone entirely, replaced by new mountains formed from new collisions we can't predict.
Nothing is permanent. Not even the things that seem most permanent.
What the Peaks Reflected Back
I went to the mountains looking for answers. Clarity about what to do with my life. Direction. Purpose.
The mountains didn't give me any of that.
What they gave me instead was a different kind of question. Not "What should I do?" but "Why am I in such a hurry to figure it out?"
We treat life like it's a problem that needs solving. Like we're supposed to optimize our way to happiness, productivity, meaning. We read books about finding purpose. We take courses on discovering our passion. We're constantly searching for the thing that will make everything click into place.
But the mountains have no purpose. They don't mean anything. They just exist—massively, undeniably, without justification or explanation.
And somehow that's enough.
The Practice of Presence
I'm not going to tell you that a month in the mountains fixed me. I came back to the same life, the same uncertainties, the same questions that don't have clean answers.
But something did shift. I'm less frantic about it now. Less convinced that I need to have everything figured out by some arbitrary deadline.
The mountains taught me that presence isn't a technique or a practice you master. It's just what happens when you stop trying to be anywhere other than where you are. When you stop treating every moment as a stepping stone to some better future moment.
Most days, I still reach for my phone too often. I still get anxious about decisions that probably don't matter as much as I think they do. But occasionally—maybe once a week, maybe once a day if I'm lucky—I'll catch myself in a moment of pure attention. Looking at something without trying to capture it. Listening without planning my response. Just being there.
Those moments feel like the mountains. Solid. Real. Enough.
The Return to Movement
On my last day in the cabin, I woke before dawn and hiked up to a viewpoint I'd visited dozens of times. The Dachstein was there, as it had been every morning. Same peaks. Same presence.
But I was different. Not transformed in some dramatic way. Just... quieter inside.
The drive back to Vienna took three hours. With every kilometer, I could feel the world speeding up again. More cars. More buildings. More people moving with purpose and urgency. By the time I reached the city, I was back in the flow of modern life, checking messages, making plans, thinking about what came next.
But I carried something back with me. A memory of stillness. A reminder that beneath all the movement and noise and constant change, there are things that remain. Not forever—nothing lasts forever. But long enough to provide perspective. Long enough to teach patience to anyone willing to listen.
Lessons Written in Stone
What did the mountains teach me? Not in the sense of lessons I can bullet-point or turn into actionable advice. But in the sense of understanding that settles in your bones.
They taught me that presence isn't about achieving some zen state of perfect calm. It's about staying with what is, even when what is feels boring or uncomfortable or not enough.
They taught me that change and permanence aren't opposites. Everything changes. Everything stays. It's just a matter of timescale.
They taught me that meaning isn't something you find or create. Sometimes it's something you stop demanding. Sometimes the most meaningful moments are the ones where you're not trying to extract meaning at all.
They taught me that I don't need to have everything figured out. The mountains don't have a plan. They just respond to forces—wind, water, time—and slowly, imperceptibly, they become what they're becoming.
Maybe that's enough for me too.
Standing at the Base of Forever
I think about those mountains often now. Especially on days when everything feels urgent and overwhelming and like it matters so much.
The Dachstein is still there. Still rising one millimeter per year. Still witnessing whatever humans do in its shadow. Still completely indifferent to my anxiety about whether I'm living my life correctly.
There's comfort in that indifference. Not the comfort of being coddled or reassured, but the comfort of being put in your place. Of being reminded that you're part of something much older and larger than your own small story.
I don't know if I'll go back. Part of me wants to. Part of me thinks the lesson only works once, that returning would be trying to recapture something that can't be recaptured.
But I know the mountains will be there if I do. They'll be there if I don't. They'll be there long after I'm gone, teaching silence to whoever shows up willing to listen.
That's what permanence looks like. Not unchanging. Not eternal. Just patient enough to outlast our human need for everything to mean something right now.
The mountains can wait. They've been waiting for 200 million years. What's another century or two?
Sometimes the most important thing we can learn is how to stand still while the world keeps turning. The mountains have been doing it forever. Maybe we can manage it for a month. Maybe even a day.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by the constant pressure to move, to change, to become something other than what you are—maybe spend some time with things that don't move. Not to escape. Not to find answers. Just to remember what it feels like to exist without justification.
The mountains will still be there. They always are.