climb every mountain

It's important to have nonagenerian role-models.

Charles Houston died in September at age 96. He was a physician, an impassioned proponent of universal health care, a humanitarian, and climber. In the 1930s he led an assault on the imposing K2, and survived a catastrophe in which he'd estimated his party's chances to be no more than 1 in 10. He now thinks his friend and climbing-partner Art Gilkey sacrificed himself for the group.

Why climb a mountain? Because it's an adventure, a challenge, and a growth opportunity. We must always try to exceed our reach, and do things we think may be beyond us.

Bill Moyers interviewed him a few years ago. He's an inspiration.



[UPDATE: I didn't realize, when I posted this on Friday morning, that Friday's night's broadcast of Bill Moyers' Journal would be his last. Those are big shoes he's leaving for someone to fill. Friday's Fresh Air was devoted to him. He's now officially supplanted Jimmy Carter as my favorite Southern Baptist. He was already my favorite living Texan. (R.I.P., Molly Ivins.)]

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And, for the record on this Walpurgisnacht Day:
On this day in 1852, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal, recording his observations of the woods and fields around Concord, Massachusetts:

"Down the Boston road and across to Turnpike, etc., etc. The elms are now generally in blossom and Cheney's elm still also. The last has leaf-buds which show the white. Now, before any leaves have appeared, their blossoms clothe the trees with a rich, warm brown color, which serves partially for foliage to the street-walker, and makes the tree more obvious. ... It is a beautiful day, — a mild air, — and all farmers and gardeners out and at work. Now is the time to set trees and consider what things you will plant in your garden. Yesterday I observed many fields newly plowed, the yellow soil looking very warm and dry in the sun; and one boy had fixed his handkerchief on a stick and elevated it on the yoke, where it flapped or streamed and rippled gaily in the wind, as he drove his oxen dragging a harrow over the plowed field. [...] Dodging behind a swell of land to avoid the men who were plowing, I saw unexpectedly (when I looked to see if we were concealed by the field) the blue mountains' line in the west (the whole intermediate earth and towns being concealed), this greenish field for a foreground sloping upward a few rods, and then those grand mountains seen over it in the background, so blue, —seashore, earth-shore, — and, warm as it is, covered with snow which reflected the sun. Then when I turned, I saw in the cast, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two-thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes. Such a sight excites me. The earth is worthy to inhabit." Writer's Almanac

Drunk on the ground

William James pitied "poor Nietzsche's antipathy," as most of us who were early smitten with Zarathustra eventually do. See Gary Kamiya's "Falling Out With Superman," for instance. Or the alienated teen in "Little Miss Sunshine" who (unlike his hero) eventually reconciles with, and rejoins, the human race. (When Nietzsche Wept is another cinematic tribute that has its moments of insight.)

But somehow the books remain, in some pre-postmodern way detached from their author and standing magnificently apart... as on a tall peak just beyond reach. The Dawn, Human, All too Human, Beyond Good and Evil, Genealogy of Morals, Antichrist, Twilight of the Idols, Gay Science, Thus Spake Zarathustra... Works of genius, and of despair that refuses to name and accept its condition. But, with enough of the truth to arrest a young person who knows this can't be all there is, who knows there has to be something better still to come. But (this sensibility attests) it must come here, in this life, and perhaps recurrently, eternally.

James and Nietzsche did have in common a mutual affinity for the heights, bracing and invigorating and (ultimately, forJames) terminal. Mountain hikes became James's "main hold on primeval sanity and health of soul." Maybe he was insane to hike so hard in his condition, at his age (60+ with a fluttery heart), but he might have been crazy not to. In 1899 he told his brother Henry, the novelist, that his "ridiculous cardiac weakness" was inconvenient, that his strenuous hikes had probably strained his heart, but that he nonetheless was "glad I had the experience, even at the price!"

Alain de Boton chronicles the price Nietzsche paid, tracing the bleak objective day-to-day mundanities of

his soaring Swiss Mountain philosophy. "Nietzsche spent seven years in Sils-Maria... He would rise at five," work all morning in his small rented room, then hit the peaks. (That's Piz Corvatsch.) In the evening, typically, it was back to the room, a solitary dinner, and an early bed. Sounds stark and easy, and to most of us drearily depressing. But it must have been hard. That's what he liked most about climbing mountains, and writing books: the difficulty and challenge and growth-opportunity ("What doesn't kill me" etc.) of scaling those imposing altitudes. Then, the great payoff at the summit, "a primal delight at being alive to see such beauty."

Again, Nietzsche (the rare tea-totaling German) admired Emerson... who could get drunk sober, simply treading the bare flat ground. (In Nature Emerson famously wrote: "Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.")

Me too. Crossing Hillwood High School's playing fields with my dogs, in dappled morning sunlight, thinking only of getting home and having a good breakfast... It happens all the time.

I love the mountains as much as the next philosopher, but I really think it's more about where you plant your head than your feet.

None of which is to deny that feet, particularly feet in motion, are indispensable too. We have walked far, up and down and all around. Walk on.

oldest recorded footprints

Mountain philosophy

While Carolina is still on my mind, I note that William James also visited the area we've just returned from. In 1891 he climbed Mount Mitchell and called it "the most beautiful forest walk (only five hours) I ever made." Robert Richardson notes that he also climbed Roan Mountain and Grandfather Mountain, and on the same trip encountered the mountaineers who inspired his own favorite essay "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings." The moral of that story is that others see the world differently than we do, and it's ok that they do.

That's pluralism, by the way, closely related to cosmopolitanism. More on the precise nature of their relation as soon as I figure out how to say it. Or point to it.