Mount Matterhorn is an special kind of arête, or what results when two corries are formed back to back. A corrie (also know as a cirque) is a massive hollow on the side of a mountain formed by millions of years of glacial erosion i.e. snow and ice moving down the mountain and eroding its surface. So just imagine a mountain with three sides having been 'scooped' out by downhill traveling snow over a few thousand millennia i.e. a mountain possessing not one, not two, but three corries. Or, don't bother imagining. There's Matterhorn. The Swiss Alps' proud pyramidal peak.

I was almost there. More than two decades ago. Only I couldn't go up the mountain because it was the cable car's day off or something like that. I recall a tinge of disappointment when told we couldn't ascend, but it was nothing which lasted beyond the next meal. This was 1983. I wonder what I would've though if someone had told me then, "One day this very mountain will be a part of what you do for a living."

Matterhorn. Maybe a symbol (for me at least) of experiences we've missed or avoided but to which we will eventually return with unexpected (and perhaps heightened) significance. I cannot (or refuse to) be part of X now, but in the future my life will intertwine with X in a way I can't possibly imagine in the present. It could be a talent, a problem, a treasure, a task, a confession, a secret, a memory, a fear, a hope, a word.

Alas, it may even be a Person.