Mountains of the Mind: a History of a Fascination

Product Information

But what is Hopkins’ line doing, serving as an epigraph to such a book? Hopkins’ poem is about melancholia; indeed, it might be one of the most powerful and moving explorations of the mind’s travails. Here is how I read his line: our mind is capable of entertaining thoughts and feelings which contain within them chasms of despair, points at which we stare into a dark abyss, an unfathomable one, with invisible depths. These are our own private hells, glimpses of which we catch when we walk up to the edge and look. The effect on the reader–especially one who has been to the mountains–is dramatic; you are reminded of the frightening heights from which you can gaze down on seemingly endless icy and windswept slopes, the lower reaches of which are shrouded with their own mysterious darkness; and you are reminded too, of the darkest thoughts you have entertained in your most melancholic moments. When Hannibal crossed the Alps in ancient times, it was for the practical purpose of crossing a barrier with solid objectives in mind: surprise and conquest. Sea voyagers did what they did to find gold or to fill in the maps with seized colonial holdings for royalty. Nature, or nature for its own sake, was never a goal, it was an obstacle; something to be feared, surmounted, but not surmounted strictly to surmount it. It was an inconvenience, a challenge in the way of an end game. For that reason it doesn't deal in names, dates, peaks and heights, like the standard histories of the mountains, but instead in sensations, emotions and ideas. He conveys the enthusiast's passion for what is certainly in part an irrational pursuit convincingly, and while it (fortunately) may not be enough to get all readers to lace up their hiking boots and set out for the nearest base camp, it makes for a fine trip for the imagination in the comfort of one's own home.

There is something august and stately in the Air of these things,’ he wrote after the Simplon crossing, ‘that inspires the mind with great thoughts and passions … as all things have that are too big for our comprehension, they fill and overbear the mind with their Excess, and cast it into a pleasing kind of stupor and imagination.” A new kind of exploration writing, perhaps even the birth of a new genre, which doesn’t just defy classification–it demands a whole new category of its own.”– The Telegraph (UK) Over and over I read that passage, and I wanted nothing more than to be one of those two tiny dots, fighting for survival in the thin air. It is these very dangers, this alternation of hope and fear, the continual agitation kept alive by these sensations in his heart, which excite the huntsman, just as they animate the gambler, the warrior, the sailor and, even to a certain point, the naturalist among the Alps whose life resembles closely, in some respects, that of the chamois hunter."So much of mountaineering today seems aggressively performative, meaning that it is perfectly in keeping with the 21st century social media-driven zeitgeist. Climbers keep finding new ways to be the “first” to do something. One of the symbols of conspicuous wealth is paying an outfitter to drag you to the top of Everest. Somewhat less ambitious influencers travel to the world’s other iconic wonders, where they proceed to take a selfie of themselves, sometimes dying in the process. Of course the significant difference between de Saussure's chamois hunter and me was that for the hunter, risk wasn't optional - it came with the job. I sought risk out, however. I courted it. In fact, I paid for it. This is the great shift which has taken place in the history of risk. Risk has always been taken, but for a long time it was taken with some ulterior purpose in mind: scientific advancement, personal glory, financial gain. About two-and-a-half centuries ago, however, fear started to become fashionable for its own sake. Risk, it was realised, brought its own reward: the sense of physical exhilaration and elation which we would now attribute to the effects of adrenaline. And so risk-taking - the deliberate inducement of fear - became desirable: became a commodity.

I read Annapurna three times that summer. It was obvious to me that Herzog had chosen wisely in going for the top, despite the subsequent costs. For what, he and I were agreed, were toes and fingers compared to having stood on those few square yards of snow? If he had died it would still have been worth it. This was the lesson I took away from Herzog's book: that the finest end of all was to be had on a mountain-top - from death in valleys preserve me, 0 Lord. Robert Macfarlane is passionate about mountain-climbing, and appropriately enough begins his book on the subject describing how in childhood he became "sold on adventure". The transformation of mountain landscapes in the European imagination was an astonishing reversal and that process has rarely been explored so effectively as Robert Macfarlane does in Mountains of the Mind. (...) Macfarlane argues that romanticism continues to dictate our responses to mountain landscapes." - Ed Douglas, The Observer Macfarlane, who continues his family's tradition of climbing, has assembled a convincing book of historical evidence alongside his own oxygen-deprived experiences in an attempt to answer the age-old question, "Why climb the mountain ?"" - Stephen Lyons, San Francisco Chronicle

I thought of the resistless passion which drives men to undertake terrific scrambles. No example can deter them . . . a peak can exercise the same irresistible power of attraction as an abyss." On 17th May Mallory sends a letter to Ruth "on the eve of our departure for the highest we can reach", and the next day he, Morshead, Norton and Somervell set off from Base Camp to Camp IV. Their plan is to leave the North Col and move up the north-east ridge, bivouac, and then make a bid for the summit the following day. No animal or plant could exist here. In the pure morning light this absence of all life, this utter destitution of nature, seemed only to intensify our own strength. How could we expect anyone else to understand the peculiar exhilaration that we drew from this barrenness, when man's natural tendency is to turn towards everything in nature that is rich and generous?' But Macfarlane convincingly suggests that much of the spell of mountaineering is this very thing, carried over into adulthood, and that is what he means to convey in this book:

Equally interesting, in our understanding of the relationship between mind and mountains, is the view of them outside European thought, a region Macfarlane barely explores. While Romanticism was given a free hand with mountains in Europe to shape our responses to them, in China, India or Japan, mountains were not seen simply as being on the margins of human culture.

Fue The Sacred Theory la que comenzó la erosión de la ortodoxia bíblica, según la cual, la Tierra siempre había tenido el mismo aspecto, y fue The Sacred Theory la que conformaría de manera crucial la forma de percibir e imaginar las montañas. Que ahora seamos capaces de imaginar un pasado —una historia profunda— de los paisajes se debe en parte a las cavilaciones de Burnet sobre la destrucción a lo largo de diez años.” The last two chapters of the book were the best. The chapter on Everest gave a straightforward account of George Mallory's obsession with climbing Everest that I found compelling, and the final chapter, which is also the shortest chapter, was most like what I expected the book to be about: a critical analysis of the human drive to climb to the top. When I read this passage, it made absolute sense to me, despite the intervening centuries. As de Saussure said, risk-taking brings with it its own reward: it keeps a "continual agitation alive" in the heart. Hope, fear. Hope, fear - this is the fundamental rhythm of mountaineering. Life, it frequently seems in the mountains, is more intensely lived the closer one gets to its extinction: we never feel so alive as when we have nearly died.