Long before Jon Krakauer was around to write about climbing mountains, others did, although not necessarily as well. It wasn't so long ago that mountaineering was an adventure for gentlemen. Before that era, little was written about climbing mountains.
What's the oldest? Oldness is not good in itself, but something could be gained by reading something written when the idea was fresh to Civilization.
And we're lucky, too. Apparently the first written record of a mountain climbing expedition was left by the "father of the Renaissance," Francesco Petrarca, aka Petrarch. In the 1330's, just a few years before the Black Death hit Europe, he got it into his head to climb Mt. Ventoux, aka Windy Peak. (You might recognize the mountain as a famous stage in the annual Tour de France.) Even odder, he then blogged about it.
When I came to look about for a companion I found, strangely enough, that hardly one among my friends seemed suitable, so rarely do we meet with just the right combination of personal tastes and characteristics, even among those who are dearest to us...
...such defects, however grave, could be borne with at home, for charity suffereth all things, and friendship accepts any burden; but it is quite otherwise on a journey, where every weakness becomes much more serious.I had to smile about his difficulty of finding a compatible travel partner. That was a problem almost 700 years ago, and it still is! So remember that, the next time you suffer some frustration on this account.
We found an old shepherd in one of the mountain dales, who tried, at great length, to dissuade us from the ascent, saying that some fifty years before he had, in the same ardour of youth, reached the summit, but had gotten for his pains nothing except fatigue and regret, and clothes and body torn by the rocks and briars. No one, so far as he or his companions knew, had ever tried the ascent before or after him.Perhaps the old shepherd was right, if you see climbing a mountain in purely physical and athletic terms; and we could still make that mistake today. But Petrarch was a thinker, so he started thinking of climbing Mt. Ventoux in metaphorical terms.
I finally sat down in a valley and transferred my winged thoughts from things corporeal to the immaterial...His metaphor was Christian of course: climbing a mountain was analogous to the climb toward Bliss. This was the Middle Ages after all. Many modern people have become so priggishly atheistic that they can't appreciate anything from another era. Why, I've even known a European who wouldn't even blurt out a reasonable expletive if she hit her thumb with a hammer! But we need not take religious doctrine literally when reading something from a religious era. Their metaphors could be generalized to something poetic or philosophical that we can still relate to.
Perhaps Petrarch's short essay doesn't do you as much good as William Blake's, "Great things happen when men and mountains meet, that doesn't happen jostling in the street."
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| The Little Valiant One triumphs at the summit cairn over another mighty peak. |
But what are Blake's "great things?"
This essay probably seems like it is meandering and not really going anywhere. I can only beg patience from the reader. Think about the multi-colored dots on the computer screen when you first turn on Windows 7. They spin around for a couple seconds before you realize that they are centripetal rather than centrifugal. At first, they appear too random to really lead to anything. Finally they coalesce in the center as a Windows symbol and a musical jingle. Maybe all essays should work like that.
Comments
That mountains have a spiritual suggestion occurs across civilizations. Think of Mt. Olympus in ancient Greece, home of the gods, and think of the native American culture as well. Heaven is viewed as above the sky somewhere, i.e., upward. Think of the gothic style churches with their pointed arches and ultra high ceilings (built without modern equipment in the middle ages at absolutely tremendous effort and sacrifice.) It FELT RIGHT to see spirituality as UP THERE somewhere and mountains are the highest points on earth.
I know you aren't likely into this but those who believe in energy systems, like the chakras, believe the lower chakras are earth-orientated, our physical being, and as energy rises in the body it transitions at the heart and becomes more "spiritual" until it reaches the last chakra, at the top of the head, which is the most spiritual. Again, the spiritual is considered the highest, that which reaches upward to what is beyond.
Makes total sense.
In terms of your question of why men are so fascinated with mountains, I think there is another aspect as well and this one is related to man's ego and his attempt to conquer nature. Besides Krakauer's book, there's another good one, true story, about a climber who had fallen into a crevasse and was left for dead by his partner, who then crawled and dragged himself out of the mts. somewhere in South America. Unbelievable. Anyway, the question is why do people risk their lives in these cases? I think it's simply man's ego, to tell the truth, man wishing to be master of the universe. It extends to other behaviors besides climbing Everest-style mts. It is the viewpoint that our rightful place is to dominate, that everything is here for our use, subject to our desires. This is as compared to the opposing viewpoint that man is just a part of the cycle of life.
I certainly agree that mountains easily fit into religious systems, and more about that in part III!
Yes, Ego is a big part of climbing mountains. I'm happy to have outgrown that phase, years ago.
It is the meandering trail that takes you from where you are, to where you are going, without missing the places in between.
The "pointed" approach is that the speaker already has drawn a conclusion and is out to convince the other. The discussion easily develops an argumentative undertone. This is not a pleasant experience for many people. (There certainly seem to be some though who choose to bring every conversation to this level for they love the polarities as they are easily discernible and these folks do not like looking at all the shades of gray. It can be difficult to hold the tension that is there when things are not clear cut.)
One can certainly explain their take on the matter without being pointed. These are just words (all with our own personal connotations) but I hope you can decipher what I mean.
I thrive on philosophical discussions as you already know. I belong to a group here which has mastered what you have done above, everybody has their subjective take on things and we all just put it out there. As a group, we draw no conclusions but I always leave a bit tweaked myself because somebody opened my eyes to something I haven't considered before and I very much appreciate that.
You often do that here and it's a good thing.
Sometimes I can talk too much and I apologize if I am doing that now but your last point is an important one. It is a bit of an ego thing to push one's rock-hard conclusion. It becomes more important to be right than to be open to new ideas. It's a wonderful advantage of aging, in my opinion, for I was quite pointed when young and needed to be in my line of work.
So glad to be able to outgrow some of that ego, as you have put it. What a relief!
I would also argue that the simple internal drive to conquer and command fear within is the greater drive. It is those fears that stop men/women from striving for the things that could be.
When you conquer the outer fears, the inner ones become less formidable.
But "no possibility of dominating a mountain." Well, "surmounting" the mountain is a type of domination.
And the moment-by-moment sensory feedback of achievement--because one clearly has made progress by dint of one's efforts--is a species of gratification that modern society, with its sedentary and desk-centered, report-heavy, "achievements" cannot equal.
Another, somewhat questionable thought: There may have been an evolutionary advantage to those who sought the high places, because they are easier to defend from enemies. Thus, the genes of "loving the high places" and seeking to scale them may have been passed down. I don't put much stock in that idea, but it's an interesting possibility.
And earlier posts have already touched on the organic/woman/man/curves shapes of mountains and hills and valleys. This undoubtedly plays into the aesthetic attraction of many who feel the yearning to toil far from the plains.
In short: Nearly every human joy or engagement has as many motivations as there are types of people--indeed, more...because most individuals likely have multiple motivations for their desires and behaviors at varying levels of consciousness.
And there's a dialectic between inner and outer competence and courage: They tend to feed each other when exercised, and diminish each other when not exercised.
And, to return the courtesy I will state what must be apparent to many who read your blog--that you have a subtle, creative, independent-thinking, and big-picture mind. And I, for one, very much enjoy hearing from that kind of mind.
Yes, good thought on the introversion/extroversion variable explaining, at least in some cases, where one more often and more naturally turns to exercise one's courage. I agree--with the qualification, of course, that human nature is sufficiently complex and subtle as to offer many exceptions to every rule...and that willy-nilly introverts must confront the outside world, and to a lesser degree extroverts must also confront the inner world.
(And on R. Brooke, his musical lyricism, his melancholy and enthusiasm...it is the poetry of a young man, which, of course, is all fate ever allowed him to be, as he died an early death in WWI. And when one wants a fix of emotional and lyrical intensity with a dash of morbid sadness, poured out in alliterative and echoing bounty, Brooke is a good bet.)