When I was a kid, I liked to climb trees. Not as a daredevil would, not to the highest branches, but high enough that I could see our house and yard from a new angle. It was like standing on my head, something else I liked to do back then.

Now I dream of a cabin on a ridge. Mountains will rise in the distance, a ribbon of river binding them to earth. And beyond them, clouds will pile plump as pillows. It will be hard at times to tell the mountains from the clouds, the soil from the sky. But I will know the horizon and my place in the world.

Is this the allure of views, then, that they help us belong? Or is it the opposite: that they teach us to escape?