By the time we reached the Salt Lake Valley, the sun was long set and it was dark — but especially so to our east. It was as if existence had been swallowed up, an abyss where all roads ended. It was disorienting, but it made sense the next morning: we’d run into the Wasatch Range.

The Wasatch, including peaks like Mount Ogden and Ben Lomond, is the eastern anchor of the basin and range extending all the way into California. In this great expanse, the planet sighs a slow exhale, giving way for the crust to fall into these wide open basins punctuated by exposed ranges. The drive across is a roller coaster of passes, long flats punctuated by ups and downs dividing the wide open. From space, it looks systematically wrinkled, in need of ironing.

For many of us, the relief of our mountains is familiar, so much so that we can orient ourselves by the terrain. Many even use features to gauge the season, such as looking for the snow outlined “face” of Ben Lomond that appears each winter. Old photos of Ogden show a drastic shift from dry scrub in the foothills to engineered, verdant, tree-lined neighborhood streets. But the mountains above are stalwart fixtures. A rock or two has tumbled, but layers and curves of quartzite and limestone stubbornly endure.

Farther east, the Uintas are especially enigmatic and entrancing to me. For one thing, they run east-west instead of north-south like most mountain ranges. Yet it’s their character that especially pulls me up to the high altitudes there. Peaks in the Uintas are rounded off and talus-strewn, taunting passersby to imagine a stroll up to the ridge. However, the air is thin 2 miles above sea level, and the relative smoothness viewed from a distance gives way to giant slabs up close. Soon you’re scrambling and catching your breath.

While the Wasatch emerges from active fault lines, the Uintas feel more like a giant deposit that’s been piled over hundreds of millions of years. Stone walls crack symmetrically in layers and squares, forming steps and walls. Glaciers have come and gone, leaving behind polished slabs, rocky cirques and conical monuments of rounded boulders. Places like Naturalist Basin, located just a few hours walk from the Mirror Lake Highway, reveal high-elevation otherworlds, enormous amphitheaters dotted with lakes edged by a perimeter wall a mile in diameter.

Signs at trailheads urge humans to keep campsites away from water, leave chainsaws in the car and keep transport limited to feet or hooves. These are wilderness areas for good reason. It’s quiet in the mountains save for a flicker pounding its beak into bark or a pika making a characteristic mew that sounds like the release of a spring wound up too tight. The largest beings, such as moose, stealthily stroll across meadow and swamp and among the even larger interwoven organisms of aspen groves.

There’s solace in mountains. I don’t understand them, but I trust them. I release the entirety of my weight onto a mountain path. Earth holds me up, even if I’m burdened by an extra pack or other weight on my shoulders. Mountains, even with all they have to bear, can hold and lift a little more.

There are wonders in springs popping out of mountainsides, spiders’ webs spanning creeks, layers of rock that have swapped places amidst faulting. These are all astonishing, and they are all completely natural where rocky uplifts endure. Mountains outlive us all, bearing witness to our comings and goings. I’m not one for miracles, but I’ll celebrate the slow patience and relative permanence of layers eroding only grain by grain. Even more than the fascination and awe, there’s comfort in all this. I live here in the valley, but mountains are what I know as home.

Adam Johnston is a professor of physics and director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at Weber State University, where he helps prepare future teachers and supports educators throughout Utah.