"The Mountain That Would Be God" or at least Given Some Almighty Attention

This is not a revival of the Wild Salmon countdown run earlier through the month of August (see the archive), but an instance of an insistent Mt. Rainier.  The reflected sunset this evening (Sept. 2) around 7 pm gave this command performance above Seattle’s Capitol Hill.   Again this representation, like the others below, was snapped with the support of the street sign at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and 1st Ave. N.E. in Wallingford.  (It is one of the about 400 scenes I have repeated most days for the last two years for art and exercise.)  The expression “The Mountain That Would Be God” got considerable play during the long early-20th Century contest between Seattle and Tacoma promoters over how to name Mt. Rainier/Mt. Tacoma.   For some “The God Mountain” was a glorious compromise, although ordinarily this almighty allusion was expressed differently, using instead the rhetorical banner just noted in sentences like “Dear, do you suppose uncle Knud from Bismark would like a drive up to The Mountain That Would Be God?”  And the answer, “Dear, I believe that the  proper name is ‘The Mountain That Was God.’ not ‘would be God’.  You may have thinking of the The Man Who Would Be King a short story by Rudyard Kipling.  Have you read it?”  “No, but I did get started with his novella, The Man Who Would Be Kind.”

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