Mountians

“Mountains, Gandalf, Mountains!” The hobbit gestured wildly up at the wizard on the TV screen across the room.

Gonga grunted, sliding down further on the couch.

“I want to see mountains!”

Gonga reached over and punched the pause button on the remote. Mountains. He did want to see mountains. Quite a lot. His friend’s planned expedition to Mount Everest interested him slightly. Though he wasn’t so much a fan of ice and cold. Gonga didn’t really like altitude much either. One trip up Kilimanjaro as a teen had pretty much ruined his appetite for anything higher than 4000 feet above sea level.

But he did want to see mountains again. He’d had enough of sitting around watching the library’s entire DVD collection over the last two weeks since classes were over. It had been interesting the first week. But now the actors were all jumbling together, and he was pretty sure the producers had all watched each other’s movies. They all seemed oddly alike at any rate. He wasn’t even sure if he had kept the “Need to watch” stack separate from the “Already watched” stack.

Gonga pushed himself off the couch.

Where was Derick anyway? He had disappeared a couple weeks ago for some insane outdoor adventure up in Minnesota. But he had invited him to go on a canoe trip, right? When was that again?

Gonga shuffled through the litter of empty water bottles and wadded up newspapers towards his calendar. There is was. A bright red canoe sticker was plastered on July 27th. Ah. That’s when Dereck said he would get back.

Gonga scratched his head, wondering if he was supposed to prepare anything. And then wondering where in the world the canoe trip was, and furthermore, what he was supposed to do in the next month.

Mountains.

That word intrigued him. Perhaps he would find mountains over the next few weeks.

He glanced down at his fur. Black. Black mountains! That would be perfect. But where?