October 17, 2026

There Are Still Mountains

corruption never has been compulsory, and when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.

Jeffers wrote this poem in 1925, watching America harden from a young republic into an industrial empire he believed was rotting from within. Living apart from the cities at Tor House on the California coast, he built his life and his stone tower as a deliberate distance from what he called the thickening center. The line insists that decay in the world around us is never a reason to decay ourselves. It speaks to resilience because it names corruption as a choice, not a fate, and points to something unspoiled that remains available no matter what collapses.