Skip to main content

Why Climb Mountains?

"...it is not sufficiently considered that men more frequently require to be reminded than informed."  [Samuel Johnson, Rambler #2, available at Quotidiana.org]
Few better examples of that aphorism could be found than that of a traveler, moving up into Colorado for the summer, who rereads Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air."  And so I did, just before climbing Mt. Taylor near Grants, NM.

It might seem silly to read about somebody's hard-core adventure before heading off to our own soft-core adventure. But is it silly for somebody walking along an ocean beach to wade out, ankle-deep, into the incoming foam? It helps them connect mentally and philosophically with the ocean. 

I haven't enjoyed a hike this much, in years. Although Mt. Taylor is only 11,300 feet high, it completely lords over a large section of New Mexico. It was oddly calm on top. The lack of wind made for visibility of 70 miles in all directions.

There are certain conditions that almost guarantee a fine hike. First, start below tree-line, in a dismal, mismanaged, over-grown forest. (The US Forest Service makes success easy, in this regard.) You want to experience the full intensity and liberation of walking out into the openness.

A serried tree-line is best for visual contrast; otherwise you would walk out onto a monotonous lunar landscape of scree (or rubble). The most interesting tree-line is similar to the most interesting shoreline: one of coves, bays, and islands. 

A forest ranger explained the pleasantness of Mt. Taylor to me: fires used to burn the afternoon-facing slopes right up to snow banks along the top. Today the hiker can enjoy this partly open characteristic throughout the last hour of the hike.

Something about his explanation evoked the word, bergschrund, used by Krakauer. Fire instead of ice; fire climbing up the mountain instead of down it, like a glacier. Upward swiftly and capriciously, rather than downward and inexorably. Fire as an anti-glacier. 

And yet another pleasantness: the mountain isn't too steep. Remember that a helicopter isn't waiting at the top to spirit you off the mountain. Who wants to walk back down a steep trail where you are always worried about slipping and sliding? The constant fatigue of walking down a steep slope turns into sheer trudgery and drudgery.

  The gullies had an interesting look.



The photograph -- a mere two-dimensional medium, after all -- doesn't do justice to the sculpted, three-dimensional shapeliness of those gullies. I had to grin (and sigh) about them.  How susceptible a young man's brain is to curves of a different kind!, and how silly it all seems to me now, as an old man. But think of the consequences -- most of them dire -- to an unfortunate, naive, young man. And yet it's the youthful madness and delusion that we owe our existence to.

I haven't written too much about the 'why' of climbing mountains. But in writing an essay I prefer to start with the Concrete, and then step-by-step, put it into a Bigger Picture. Indeed, isn't that what we naturally do as we climb a mountain? More next time on this theme.

Comments

Michael said…
Oh Dear Mother Nature,

My tree trunks so long for your shapely gullies and and your thermodynamically-unstable distributions within my bedrock. My volcanic tendencies are so near eruption just imagining your warm fronts wafting over my caldera.

Metamorphically yours, from your most secret alluvial fan.
Michael said…
"How susceptible a young man's brain is to curves of a different kind!, and how silly it all seems to me now, as an old man."

Ah, the same can be said, for better or worse, about all our passions and engagements, every urge, impulse, commitment, and cause that considers life worthwhile.

"To be or not to be, that is the question..." To be seduced by life's curves and colors--which always exact a high price and in any case can be enjoyed only fleetingly--or to reject such shiny trinkets, leaving one with a far more narrow, though perhaps autonomous, experience of living...or, if one chooses, none at all.

Of course, this dilemma is tackled by various religions and philosophies and psychologies...with varying degrees of effectiveness and honesty.

(A different) Michael
Ahh now, Michael, I'm going to have to scold you for preaching old-mannish WeltSchmerz. (See google translator, German.) I am still passionate about many things, and appreciate more things than I used to.

It is only the temporary sex-obsession of Youth that I was smirking at.

Anyway, since uber-commenter, George, is on strike right now, I am glad you are taking up the slack. (grin)
XXXXX said…
I was trying to figure out how to start my own blog but I give up. I'd rather haunt yours. :) (I really hate all the ways one has to make sure that the reader knows whatever is said is meant humorously. A good subject for another day.)
Anyway, I rather liked (A different) Michael's comments. I do think he has a point. It shed some light on my own observation the other day, as I was extending my garden line, that I preferred a serpentine line rather than a straight line. Could it be, that even that is reminiscent of the archetypal feminine form, in a primal sort of way?
Indeed, it is easy for readers to take things too seriously. This bad habit probably goes back to the age of Gutenberg and humble Protestant farmers and shopkeepers getting a-hold of their first book, a Bible.

The under-femininity of Mother Nature in Colorado's San Juan mountains makes it difficult to appreciate them.