Staring at Dachstein Until My Problems Shrink

Staring at Dachstein Until My Problems Shrink
Photo by Daniel Diesenreither / Unsplash

There's a particular spot on the road to Hallstatt where the Dachstein massif fills your entire windshield. 2,995 meters of limestone rising from the valley floor. I pull over there more than I should admit.

Last Tuesday, I sat there for forty minutes. My phone buzzed with emails I didn't want to read. A project deadline loomed. Someone was upset about something I'd said in a meeting. The usual noise that makes you feel like you're drowning in shallow water.

The Dachstein didn't care.

It stood there the same way it stood when Roman legions marched through these valleys. The same way it watched medieval salt traders navigate the mountain passes. The same way it will stand when whatever's bothering me now is dust and forgotten memory.

The Math of Mountains Versus Worry

Here's what I've learned about staring at mountains: they're really good at making your problems feel appropriately sized.

The Dachstein has been here for roughly 230 million years. It was here before dinosaurs walked the earth. It watched ice ages come and go—at least four major glaciation periods in the last 400,000 years alone. The glacier that still clings to its northern face has been there for approximately 10,000 years, though it's shrinking now, retreating about 15 meters per year.

My career anxiety? Maybe three months old.

That argument with a friend? Two weeks.

The embarrassing thing I said that keeps replaying in my head at 3 AM? Four days.

I'm not saying your problems don't matter. Mine matter to me too. But there's something about holding them up against geological time that shifts your perspective. It's like converting currency—suddenly you realize you've been calculating in the wrong units.

Peaceful mountain landscape with clear reflections in a calm lake.
Photo by Bri Schneiter

What Permanence Actually Teaches You

The mountains aren't actually permanent, of course. They're eroding. The Dachstein loses about 1 millimeter of height per year to weathering. In another 50 million years, it'll be significantly smaller. In 200 million years, it might be gone entirely, replaced by some new geological formation we can't even imagine.

But that's the point, isn't it?

Even the most solid things we can conceive of are temporary. They just operate on a timescale that makes them functionally eternal from our perspective. A human lifetime is roughly 0.00003% of the Dachstein's existence so far. We're not even a rounding error in its story.

This should be depressing. Sometimes it is. But more often, I find it strangely freeing.

The Witnesses That Don't Judge

The Salzkammergut mountains have seen everything. They watched the Celts mine salt here 3,000 years ago. They were here when Hallstatt became so important that an entire prehistoric period—the Hallstatt culture, 800-450 BCE—was named after this place.

They saw the Romans come and go. They watched the Habsburg Empire rise and eventually crumble. They were here during both World Wars, silent witnesses to the noise and fury of human conflict.

What did they care about any of it?

I think about this when I'm worried about being judged. About what people think of me. About whether I'm successful enough, smart enough, doing enough with my life. The mountains have watched emperors and peasants, conquerors and conquered, the celebrated and the forgotten. All of them are equally gone now. All of them mattered intensely in their moment and then didn't.

The Dachstein doesn't distinguish between them.

The Comfort of Indifference

There's a Buddhist concept I keep coming back to: the idea that suffering comes from attachment. From wanting things to be different than they are. From clinging to outcomes we can't control.

Mountains don't cling to anything. They don't have preferences about the weather. They don't worry about their reputation. They don't lie awake wondering if they're good enough.

They just are.

I'm not a mountain, obviously. I can't achieve that level of detachment, and I'm not sure I'd want to. My attachments are what make me human. My worries often point to things I care about. But there's something useful about having a reference point for what pure existence without anxiety looks like.

When I stare at the Dachstein, I'm not trying to become a mountain. I'm trying to remember that there's a scale of existence where my worries simply don't register. Where they're too small to matter.

The Practice of Mountain-Staring

I've developed what I guess you could call a practice around this. It's not meditation exactly, though there's overlap. It's more like a deliberate recalibration of scale.

Here's what I actually do when I pull over at that spot on the road:

First, I name the problem. Out loud if I'm alone. I give it its full weight. "I'm anxious about money." "I'm worried I hurt someone's feelings." "I feel like I'm failing at my work." Whatever it is, I let it be real and present.

Then I look at the mountain. Really look at it. I try to see the individual ridges, the snow fields, the exposed rock faces. I think about how long it's been there. How many human problems it's witnessed. How many people have stood roughly where I'm standing and looked at it with their own worries.

I imagine the Dachstein's perspective. Not in some mystical way—I don't think the mountain is conscious or watching me. But I try to imagine what my problem would look like from a vantage point that measures time in millions of years and space in cubic kilometers of stone.

Usually, something shifts.

A hand holds a crystal ball reflecting a serene sunset over calm ocean waters.
Photo by Sindre Fs

What Actually Changes

The problem doesn't disappear. That's important to understand. If I'm worried about money, I still need to address my finances. If I hurt someone, I still need to apologize. The mountain doesn't solve anything practical.

But the emotional charge changes. The catastrophic thinking quiets down. The sense that this problem defines my entire existence loosens its grip.

I had a project fail last year. A collaboration I'd spent six months on fell apart due to circumstances mostly beyond my control. I was devastated. I felt like a failure. I questioned my competence, my judgment, my career choices.

I drove to that spot and stared at the Dachstein for over an hour.

The project was still failed when I drove away. But I could see it more clearly. Yes, it was disappointing. Yes, I'd made some mistakes. But it wasn't the referendum on my worth that I'd built it up to be. It was one project, in one year, in one human lifetime that would barely register as a blip in the timeline of these mountains.

I could learn from it and move on.

The Danger of Perspective

There's a risk in this kind of thinking. If nothing matters in the long run, why bother with anything? If we're all just temporary specks beneath indifferent mountains, why try? Why care?

I've wrestled with this. Some days, the mountain's indifference feels less comforting and more crushing. Some days, thinking about geological time makes me feel pointless rather than free.

But I think I've found a balance.

The mountains remind me that my problems aren't as big as they feel. But they also remind me that I'm here now. That I exist in this particular moment, in this particular valley, with this particular set of circumstances and choices. The fact that it's temporary doesn't make it meaningless. If anything, the temporary nature of existence is what gives it meaning.

The Dachstein will be here long after I'm gone. That's exactly why the time I have matters.

Living With Both Truths

I'm learning to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time. My problems are both real and not real. They matter and they don't matter. They deserve my attention and they deserve to be put in perspective.

The mountains teach me this dual vision. They're massive and ancient, but they're also made of individual stones, shaped by individual raindrops over incomprehensible stretches of time. They're permanent and they're changing. They're indifferent and they're responsive—weathering, eroding, shifting in ways too slow for us to see but too real to deny.

Maybe that's what I'm really learning when I stare at the Dachstein. Not to make my problems disappear, but to see them as part of a larger pattern. To understand that worry and peace can coexist. That I can take my life seriously while also recognizing its place in a much bigger story.

The Mountains That Remain

I was talking to a friend recently who's going through something hard. A health scare. The kind of thing that makes career anxiety and social awkwardness seem trivial. I told her about my mountain practice, and she asked if it helped with real problems too.

I didn't have a good answer then. I do now.

The mountains don't distinguish between big problems and small problems. They don't rank human suffering. They're equally indifferent to a bad day at work and a terminal diagnosis. That sounds cruel, but I don't think it is.

What the mountains offer isn't a hierarchy of what matters. They offer a reminder that everything is temporary—the good and the bad. That we're all moving through time at the same pace, under the same sky, watched by the same ancient stones.

When my friend is scared, the Dachstein doesn't care. But it also doesn't care about her cancer. It's been here for 230 million years, and it will be here after her fear and her illness are both resolved, one way or another. That's not comforting in a warm, fuzzy way. But it is comforting in a deeper way.

It says: you're part of something bigger. Your suffering is real, but it's also temporary. The mountains remain.

What I Take With Me

I don't pull over at that spot on the road as often as I used to. Not because the practice doesn't work, but because I've internalized something of what the mountains teach. I can call up that perspective now without always needing the physical presence of the Dachstein.

But I still go sometimes. Especially when things feel particularly heavy or particularly urgent. When I need the reminder that urgency is often just a feeling, not a fact. That most things that feel like emergencies aren't.

The mountains have been here for 230 million years. They'll be here tomorrow. My problems can wait forty minutes while I sit and stare.

What strikes me now is how this practice has changed how I relate to time itself. I used to feel like I was always running out of it. Every day was a race against deadlines, aging, missed opportunities. The mountains taught me that time is more spacious than I thought. That forty minutes of sitting and staring isn't wasted. That slow is sometimes the appropriate speed.

I measure my life differently now. Not in productivity or achievement, but in moments of clarity. In times when I can see my place in the larger pattern. In the ability to look at something ancient and unchanging and feel both small and connected.

The Dachstein has watched countless humans come and go, each carrying their own burdens up and down these valleys. I'm just one more. My problems are just one more set in an infinite series. That's not depressing. That's company.

The View From Here

I'm writing this from a café in Hallstatt, looking out at the mountains across the lake. The Dachstein is visible in the distance, snow-covered even in late spring. Tourists are taking photos. Locals are going about their business. The mountains watch it all with their usual indifference.

I have deadlines today. Emails to answer. A decision to make that feels important. But I also have this view. This reminder that importance is relative. That the things that feel overwhelming today will be footnotes tomorrow, if they're remembered at all.

The practice of staring at mountains until your problems shrink isn't about making problems go away. It's about right-sizing them. About seeing them clearly instead of through the distorting lens of anxiety or ego or fear.

Some problems do need immediate attention. Some worries are legitimate warnings. But most of what keeps me up at night? Most of what makes my chest tight and my thoughts race? It's smaller than I think. It's temporary. It's survivable.

The mountains know this. They've seen it all before.

So I'll finish my coffee. I'll answer those emails. I'll make that decision. But first, I'll look at the Dachstein for a few more minutes. I'll let it remind me that I'm part of a story much bigger and older than my current concerns. I'll let my problems shrink to their actual size.

Then I'll get back to living, with a little more perspective and a little less panic. The mountains will still be here when I'm done. They always are.