the experience Driving this highway at 120 km/h with its distinct angular changes of direction zig-zagging between seigneuries, we can’t tell how many mountains there really are, or which mountain we are looking at. We assume singular mountains are just foothills, eventually gathering boldly together to be the Appalachians, or, returning home to Montréal, that the mountains are slowly petering out like splatters from the real mountains – as if mountains do that. But the real narrative is much better: No. 10 follows the route of seven of the nine Montérégian mountains – Mount Royal, Mount St. Bruno, Mount St. Hilaire, Mount Rougemont, Mount Yamaska, Mount Bromont, and Mount Shefford – each linked by heat on the Great Meteor Hotspot Track. Every school kid is taught (incorrectly) that Montréal is a dead volcano, and although each of these mountains do follow the same fault line, each were created by magma pushing up to create an almost-volcano – its structure made not of horizontal strata, but distorted vertical strata. The whole St. Lawrence plain was volatile. The mountains are linked below the ground to the centre of the earth, but we see them as separate, singular, and enigmatic – holding their own against the erosion of the plain. They are not the Appalachians – they are distinct. At 120km/h the mountains present themselves in three to thirty-second glimpses. They are like ships on the vast horizon of the plain, but at 120 km/h, with only a fleeting flash in the driver’s peripheral vision, blink and you miss it. The passengers can point – look over there, and there is another one! Which one did I just pass?
There are mountains; there is a sequence (East) Head east toward the weekend on Highway 10. You have driven this route so many times you barely notice the turnoffs marking miles, kilometres
towards getting there. Towards sleep or rest or walk, or build or ski. Air or mountain.
You get a note from the architects of the universe saying: you are passing history on your left, on your right quicker than you register, faster than the signs for exits, casse croutes. There are hills older than a hundred million years the magma rose and cooled and displaced crustal rock.
Mont Oka, Mont Royal . With their hidden plumes of light, intrusions in the plain, mouths of earth pressed up against the sky. Mont Saint-Bruno, Mont Saint-Hilaire and space for air and road and farm. These hills –– you've heard their names before –– or live there –– or walked them as a child –– Mont-Saint Gregoire, Mont Rougement, found leaves or apple orchards, uprisings, forests. Mont Yamaska, Mont Shefford , and a car speeds by, a truck. Mont Brome , beyond the belted Appalaches M ont Megantic. The line, the lineage of mountains aligns you to and from the ville, There before the city and after, still there waiting, their language plumes up in whispers saying, attend, attendre, even as you pass.
— Ronna Bloom, 2016
1 120km/h mountain identification Montréal to Sherbrooke: At km 1, the driver is both informed and warned – There are mountains. There is a sequence. Blink and you miss it. Each mountain is identified with a sign made of individual letters pre-warning the driver of the view to come, calling to the depth of the plain: kilometres before, the letters seem scattered between the roads, in the field – near and far, a jumble calling for the attention of the driver – all of a sudden, they coalesce moments before the mountain is seen. Like the bronze pointers at Mount Royal’s Scenic Belvedere lookout (the first mountain in the sequence), they point to and identify these key markers in the landscape.
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on site review 42: atlas :: being in place
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