I stood at the base of the Dachstein last week, my hand pressed against limestone that formed 200 million years ago. The rock felt cold. Present. Real.
That's when it hit me—this stone exists only in the present tense.
We talk about mountains as if they're ancient, as if they belong to the past. But that's wrong. The Dachstein isn't ancient. It's here. Now. The same way you're reading these words now, the mountain is being a mountain now. It doesn't remember the Triassic period when it formed under a shallow sea. It doesn't recall the ice ages that carved its face. It simply exists, moment by moment, in an eternal present that makes our human sense of time look like a nervous tic.
The Illusion of Mountain Memory
Here's what we get wrong about the Salzkammergut peaks: we think they remember.
We say things like "these mountains have witnessed empires rise and fall" or "if only these stones could speak of what they've seen." But mountains don't witness anything. They don't see. They don't store memories in their sedimentary layers like some geological hard drive. A mountain doesn't know that Celtic tribes once hunted ibex on its slopes, that Roman legions marched past its shadow, that Napoleon's armies retreated through its valleys.
The Hallstätter See reflects the Hoher Dachstein today exactly as it did 3,000 years ago when Bronze Age miners first extracted salt from these hills. But the mountain doesn't compare the two reflections. It doesn't think "ah yes, fewer boats now, more tourists." It just is.
This realization changes everything.
When I hike up to the Krippenstein, I'm not walking through history. I'm walking through the present alongside something that has mastered the art of being present in a way my restless human mind never will. The mountain doesn't dwell on its past. It can't anticipate its future erosion. It exists in a state of pure being that would make every meditation teacher in the world weep with envy.
What Present Really Means
The word "present" comes from the Latin "praesent-," meaning "being at hand." Not "was at hand" or "will be at hand." At hand. Right now.
Stand on any trail in the Salzkammergut and look up. That rock face isn't a relic. It's not a monument to the past. It's a present-tense phenomenon, actively being itself this very second. Gravity pulls on it now. Weather erodes it now. Lichens grow on it now. The mountain is engaged in the continuous act of existing, which is the only thing any of us ever really do, stripped of our stories and memories.
I find this both humbling and oddly comforting.
The Geology of Now
Let me get specific about what's actually happening in these mountains right now—not millions of years ago, but in this present moment as you read this.
The Dachstein Massif is currently rising at a rate of approximately 1-2 millimeters per year. That's happening now. Not in geological deep time, but in the same now where you're drinking your coffee or checking your phone. The tectonic forces that push the African plate against the European plate don't pause. They don't take weekends off. They work in the present tense, always.
At the same time, erosion removes roughly the same amount of material. Water seeps into cracks, freezes, expands. Right now. A tiny fragment of limestone—maybe the size of a grain of sand—just broke free from the north face of the Hoher Dachstein. You didn't notice. Neither did the mountain. But it happened in the present.
The Gosaukamm receives approximately 2,000 millimeters of precipitation annually. That rain is falling now, in someone's present moment. It's dissolving calcium carbonate from the limestone now. It's creating new caves now. It's shaping the mountain's future form, but it's doing so entirely in the present tense.
The Chemistry of Presence
Every chemical reaction happening in these mountains occurs in the present. The oxidation of iron minerals that gives some rock faces their rust-colored streaks? Present tense. The slow transformation of aragonite to calcite in ancient coral reefs now exposed at 2,000 meters elevation? Present tense. The photosynthesis in the alpine grasses clinging to cracks at the tree line? All of it, always, now.
This isn't poetic metaphor. It's literal truth.
When I learned that the half-life of uranium-238 (found in trace amounts in these mountains) is 4.5 billion years, I initially thought of it as a measurement of deep time. But that's not what half-life measures. It measures the probability of decay in any given moment. Each uranium atom in the Dachstein exists in a present-tense state of potential transformation. It might decay in the next second. It might not decay for another billion years. But if it decays, it will decay in the present.
Human Time vs. Mountain Time
We humans are obsessed with narrative. We need beginnings, middles, and ends. We need cause and effect strung together like beads on a timeline. That's how we make sense of our lives.
Mountains don't do this.
I've been coming to the Salzkammergut for twelve years now. I've watched seasons change. I've seen trails erode and new ones form. I've noticed trees grow taller, rockslides alter familiar slopes. But the mountains themselves? They're not telling a story. They're not developing as characters. They're not building toward any climax.
They're just being mountains, over and over, in each successive moment.
Think about the Hallstatt ossuary, where skulls are painted with flowers and stored because the cemetery is too small for permanent graves. Those bones once belonged to people who looked at these same mountains. But the mountains didn't experience those people looking at them. The mountains experienced—if we can even use that word—only their own present-tense existence. When those people were alive, the mountains were present. Now that they're dead, the mountains are still present. The mountains will be present when you and I are also in an ossuary somewhere.
This isn't morbid. It's just true.
The Problem with "Eternal"
We often call mountains eternal, but that's another mistake. Eternal implies existing across all time—past, present, and future simultaneously. Mountains don't do that. They exist only in the present, but they do it for a very, very long time.
The Dachstein formed roughly 200 million years ago. It will likely exist in some form for another 50-100 million years before erosion reduces it to sediment. But it doesn't experience those 300 million years as a continuous stream. It experiences only now, then the next now, then the next now, billions upon billions of present moments strung together without memory or anticipation.
That's not eternity. That's something stranger and more profound.
What Mountains Teach About Presence
I used to meditate to "be present." I'd sit on my cushion, watch my breath, notice my thoughts, try to anchor myself in the now. It was hard work. My mind wanted to plan, to remember, to narrate, to be anywhere but here.
Then I started spending more time with mountains.
You can't out-present a mountain. You can't be more "in the moment" than a limestone cliff that has no choice but to exist in this moment, and only this moment, always. The mountain isn't trying to be present. It isn't practicing presence. It simply is present, the way water is wet, the way ice is cold.
When I hike now, I pay attention to this. Not to the mountain's history or its future. Not to what it symbolizes or represents. But to what it's doing right now: existing. Being stone. Holding its shape against gravity. Weathering the wind. Reflecting light. Casting shadow.
That's all. That's enough.
The Practice of Mountain Presence
Here's what I've learned from paying attention to mountains as present-tense phenomena:
- Presence isn't a state you achieve; it's the only state that actually exists
- Memory and anticipation are mental constructions that happen in the present
- The present moment isn't fleeting—it's the only thing that isn't fleeting
- Being present doesn't require effort; it requires stopping the effort to be elsewhere
- The mountain's presence isn't peaceful or calm; it just is
That last point matters. We romanticize mountain stillness, but mountains aren't still. They're constantly changing, constantly being acted upon by forces, constantly existing in dynamic equilibrium. They're not peaceful. They're present. There's a difference.
The Witness That Doesn't Witness
People love to say that mountains are witnesses to history. The Dachstein witnessed the Roman Empire. The Hoher Krippenstein witnessed World War II. The Hallstätter Berg witnessed 7,000 years of salt mining.
But witnessing requires consciousness. It requires a subject experiencing an object. It requires memory formation. Mountains do none of this.
When Roman soldiers marched through the Salzkammergut in the first century CE, the mountains didn't observe them. The mountains were being mountains. The Romans were being Romans. Both existed in the same present moment, but there was no witnessing, no recording, no meaning-making.
The meaning came later, from human minds that can hold past and present in simultaneous awareness. We're the ones who witness. We're the ones who see the old Roman road and the ancient mountain and think "this mountain saw those Romans." But the mountain didn't see anything. It was simply present then, as it is present now.
This distinction matters because it reveals something about the nature of history itself. History doesn't exist in the world. It exists in minds that can remember and narrate. The physical world—mountains, rivers, stones—exists only in the present. We drape history over it like a blanket, but the blanket isn't real in the same way the mountain is real.
The Archive That Isn't
Geologists read mountains like books. They see sedimentary layers and reconstruct ancient seas. They find fossils and recreate extinct ecosystems. They measure isotope ratios and determine past temperatures.
This is brilliant science. But it's not the mountain remembering. It's humans interpreting present-tense physical configurations to make inferences about past states.
The limestone in the Dachstein contains fossilized coral reefs from the Triassic period. Those fossils exist now. They're not memories. They're present-tense objects that happen to have formed in the past. The difference is subtle but important. A memory is a representation of the past held in the present. A fossil is just a thing that exists now, which we interpret as evidence of past life.
The mountain isn't an archive. We use it as an archive, but that's our doing, not the mountain's.
Living in the Present Tense
So what do we do with this understanding? How does it change anything?
For me, it's changed how I experience these mountains and, by extension, how I experience my own life. When I'm walking up to the Simonyhütte and my mind starts spinning stories about the past or future, I look at the rock face beside me. That rock isn't thinking about anything. It's just being rock, right now.
I can't become a mountain. I can't shut off my narrative mind. But I can recognize that underneath all my stories, I'm also a present-tense phenomenon. My cells are metabolizing now. My heart is beating now. My neurons are firing now. The story of "me" is something extra, laid over the top of this basic present-tense existence.
The mountains remind me of this. Not through some mystical wisdom they possess, but simply by being what they are: present.
The mountain doesn't teach presence. It demonstrates it, wordlessly, constantly, without effort or intention.
The Gift of Geological Time
Understanding that mountains exist only in the present, despite their age, does something strange to my sense of time. It collapses the distance between now and deep time. The Dachstein is 200 million years old, but it's not experiencing those 200 million years. It's experiencing now, the same now I'm experiencing, just many more iterations of it.
This makes the present moment feel both more precious and less urgent. More precious because it's the only thing that actually exists—for me, for you, for the mountain. Less urgent because the present isn't going anywhere. It's not running out. It's the one constant in a universe of change.
When I'm anxious about the future or regretful about the past, I try to remember this. The future doesn't exist yet. The past doesn't exist anymore. Only the present exists, and it exists for everything simultaneously—me, you, the mountain, the lichen on the mountain, the cloud passing over the mountain.
We're all here now, together, in the only moment that ever is.
The Stone's Lesson
The Salzkammergut mountains have been here for millions of years. They'll be here for millions more. But they don't know this. They don't carry the weight of their age. They exist now, just now, always now.
That's the lesson, if there is one. Not that we should ignore the past or future—our human minds can't do that, and trying would be foolish. But that we might hold our stories more lightly. We might recognize that underneath our narratives, we're also present-tense phenomena, existing moment by moment alongside ancient stone that's somehow exactly as present as we are.
Next time you're in the mountains—any mountains, not just these—try this: don't think about what they've witnessed or how long they've stood. Just notice what they're doing right now. Being mountains. Existing. Present.
That's all any of us ever really do, when you strip away the stories. We exist, present tense, for a little while. The mountains do it for longer, but the quality of the present moment is the same. Now is now, whether you're a human who'll live 80 years or a mountain that'll stand for 80 million.
The stone beneath my hand is cold. Present. Real. Not ancient, not eternal, not a witness to history. Just here. Just now. Just this.