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.