One Russian poet, actor, singer and song-writer asked a question in one of his songs: "What is better than the mountains?" and answered: "The mountains where you haven't been yet". The song being so well-known, the lyrics haven't struck me until now when I actually started to go to the mountains.
Every week I climb one mountain with a group of people in a small icy island in the North Atlantic, the mountain can be small and gentle or high and steep, sometimes we enjoy good weather, but often we are in a blinding blizzard. No matter how different the walks are, the end point is always the same - it is breathtaking, magnificent and worth going.
Walking gives you all the time in the world to go down to your thoughts, here I tried to jot down some of them. On mountains.
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Reviving gulps of coffee evoke the primate memory of a mother´s pacifying breasts - life gradually gets its true colours. Birth is finished, life (a mountain) waits ahead.
(setja te á brúsa og fara á fjöll...)
It is not by chance that I employed a metaphor of life here - to me climbing a mountain is similar to a living a life in a miniature: half of the way you struggle to get up, lose all your strength, leave aspirations behind, forget why you had to do that, get exhausted, and then, before you know, after a small glimpse of joy, you suddenly start to slide over the hill so fast you never believe you had been there. Sounds familiar? Yeah, and it´s called "a mountain".
A mountain itself is a powerful positive concept for many things in our life, primarily something difficult, demanding (whether an experience, relationship, or work) but, eventually, worth going through. The proof to this is numerous poems, songs, quotations, images and metaphors in all creative art, both verbal and non-verbal.
The great book of the mankind utilized this image at best - all the meaningful episodes happen closer to God, therefore, on the mountain. Among those are: The Mount Sinai, where Moses received the gift of Law, the Ten Commandments; Moses and Elijah encounter God on the mountain top in the Old Testament. In the New Testament Jesus appoints His twelve disciples on the mountain, delivers His sermon on Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, there happen His final discourse and Transfiguration - some of what I remember.
In the Quran mountains are portrayed as stabilizers, as fixers of the earthly life: "Have We not made the earth as a wide expanse, And the mountains as pegs?". And lets not forget the powerful Four Sacred Mountains of Buddhism (Taoism). It is just obvious that such a meaningful and distinct landmark could not simply been overlooked by a man.
The religious connotations of the mountains being so strong, even in the twenties century literature one of my favourite writers - Aldous Huxley - endows mountains with a sacred meaning: "My father considered the walk among the mountains as the equivalent to the churchgoing" - which we all, after all do, together on a good Sunday morning.
Besides divine, there is a lot of earthly and insignificant matters, of course. Like the life itself, a walk up the mountain is overly romanticized, mostly by the highly metaphoric, hence poetic nature of the latter. For many people the attraction components are the ones which comprise the life yet again:
Nature: The only thing you actually watch most of the time is the exact distance between the feet and butt of the person who walks in front of you. The direction of the stare is most often dictated by the weather conditions (unless there´s something specifically interesting to look at): the better the weather the higher the stare is fixed, which also gives a possibility to employ the side vision and actually to see some natural beauties (snow) on a good day. But mostly, as I said, you just look down into the footsteps of the front person.
Fun: Most of the walk is difficult in this or that way: if it´s not the blizzard which gets behind the eyelids and hits the face (must get the seal fat next time I am in the ocean), it can be the path itself - going straight up or sloping abruptly down. There can be a lot of tricky ice under the fresh snow or sharp lava pieces, which heighten the chances of twisting the old joints; it can be small round stones, which primary purpose of being is only to take you downhill with a German motorbahn speed. It can be anything. It can be anything unexpected.
People: As in real life there are people around you - coworkers, neighbours, acquaintances, maybe friends and relatives, all walking with you - same time, same path, same destination. Mostly we walk silently with our thoughts. Once I imagined, what if we were thinking out loud, or if there was a person who could read our thoughts, how soon that person would go crazy? We all carry our burdens with us, everywhere, every time. And we take them with us up the mountain. Exactly as in the real life, most of the time each of us is alone there, and what is more difficult, alone with oneself.
Purpose: Often I was thinking why do we go there? Apart that it is a good physical exercise (still, running on a good day is much nicer, my moderately handsome husband says), it is (at least to me) a rather difficult task to complete every weekend. Edmund Hillary answered: "Because it is there". Gunnlaugur Júlíusson said: "Because I can". Why do we live then? What´s the purpose of life? "42"? No, wait, isn´t it "52" now?
Excitement: If someone thinks that going up the mountain is only about excitement, fun and new impressions, you are as far from the truth as you can be - climbing the mountain, even the smallest mountain is actually hard work with a varying degree of difficulty, but always work. But the result is always rewarding. The harder it takes, the more fulfilling it gets, which makes it an exact illustration to my favourite proverb: "nothing in this life which is worth having comes easy" (remember an analogy with life?).
In this respect a question "why are you climbing the mountains?" is as absurd as "why do you live?" - because it is small life. But unlike the real life, here every time you get to experience a strong feeling of completion, yet another test being passed. And what makes it much more valuable - it is a victory over something so grandeur and impressive, so meaningful and potent in the whole history of the mankind, that it becomes close to a cleansing experience.
And me - a woman from a faraway country - for the last years I have been trying to make peace, if not friends, with this strong, cold and independent Iceland. And every time I take one of your mountains, I get closer to you despite that you seem not to care. After first ten you looked at me with interest, I know. We all carry our lunch in the bag pack and coffee in the flask, we all go up for our different reasons, but on a good Sunday morning we are all united by a small victory, most important on ourselves.
At the end of the day, as William Blake said: "Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street".
So, it´s life. It hard and wonderful. Suck it up.
Every week I climb one mountain with a group of people in a small icy island in the North Atlantic, the mountain can be small and gentle or high and steep, sometimes we enjoy good weather, but often we are in a blinding blizzard. No matter how different the walks are, the end point is always the same - it is breathtaking, magnificent and worth going.
Walking gives you all the time in the world to go down to your thoughts, here I tried to jot down some of them. On mountains.
on the photo: Kerhólakambur on the 22nd of February 2014
Early Sunday morning is difficult enough: alarm-clock sharply cuts through the consciousness, you open the eyes - the time has come - you are about to be born. Mercilessly. Irreversibly. By that very moment I am dissolved completely in the agonizing empathy of the pure and innate emotion of a new born, halting with all my civilized nature a deep animal howl. Steps are feeble and shaky, sight is impaired by a blinding light of a sudden bathroom light-bulb, cold is wrapping limbs, stomach gets in a knot with a realization of inevitability of the following events; a splash of cold water in the face - there, I am ready to burst out crying, the world has to hear my voice and it suddenly gets easier.Reviving gulps of coffee evoke the primate memory of a mother´s pacifying breasts - life gradually gets its true colours. Birth is finished, life (a mountain) waits ahead.
(setja te á brúsa og fara á fjöll...)
It is not by chance that I employed a metaphor of life here - to me climbing a mountain is similar to a living a life in a miniature: half of the way you struggle to get up, lose all your strength, leave aspirations behind, forget why you had to do that, get exhausted, and then, before you know, after a small glimpse of joy, you suddenly start to slide over the hill so fast you never believe you had been there. Sounds familiar? Yeah, and it´s called "a mountain".
A mountain itself is a powerful positive concept for many things in our life, primarily something difficult, demanding (whether an experience, relationship, or work) but, eventually, worth going through. The proof to this is numerous poems, songs, quotations, images and metaphors in all creative art, both verbal and non-verbal.
The great book of the mankind utilized this image at best - all the meaningful episodes happen closer to God, therefore, on the mountain. Among those are: The Mount Sinai, where Moses received the gift of Law, the Ten Commandments; Moses and Elijah encounter God on the mountain top in the Old Testament. In the New Testament Jesus appoints His twelve disciples on the mountain, delivers His sermon on Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, there happen His final discourse and Transfiguration - some of what I remember.
In the Quran mountains are portrayed as stabilizers, as fixers of the earthly life: "Have We not made the earth as a wide expanse, And the mountains as pegs?". And lets not forget the powerful Four Sacred Mountains of Buddhism (Taoism). It is just obvious that such a meaningful and distinct landmark could not simply been overlooked by a man.
The religious connotations of the mountains being so strong, even in the twenties century literature one of my favourite writers - Aldous Huxley - endows mountains with a sacred meaning: "My father considered the walk among the mountains as the equivalent to the churchgoing" - which we all, after all do, together on a good Sunday morning.
Besides divine, there is a lot of earthly and insignificant matters, of course. Like the life itself, a walk up the mountain is overly romanticized, mostly by the highly metaphoric, hence poetic nature of the latter. For many people the attraction components are the ones which comprise the life yet again:
Nature: The only thing you actually watch most of the time is the exact distance between the feet and butt of the person who walks in front of you. The direction of the stare is most often dictated by the weather conditions (unless there´s something specifically interesting to look at): the better the weather the higher the stare is fixed, which also gives a possibility to employ the side vision and actually to see some natural beauties (snow) on a good day. But mostly, as I said, you just look down into the footsteps of the front person.
Fun: Most of the walk is difficult in this or that way: if it´s not the blizzard which gets behind the eyelids and hits the face (must get the seal fat next time I am in the ocean), it can be the path itself - going straight up or sloping abruptly down. There can be a lot of tricky ice under the fresh snow or sharp lava pieces, which heighten the chances of twisting the old joints; it can be small round stones, which primary purpose of being is only to take you downhill with a German motorbahn speed. It can be anything. It can be anything unexpected.
People: As in real life there are people around you - coworkers, neighbours, acquaintances, maybe friends and relatives, all walking with you - same time, same path, same destination. Mostly we walk silently with our thoughts. Once I imagined, what if we were thinking out loud, or if there was a person who could read our thoughts, how soon that person would go crazy? We all carry our burdens with us, everywhere, every time. And we take them with us up the mountain. Exactly as in the real life, most of the time each of us is alone there, and what is more difficult, alone with oneself.
Purpose: Often I was thinking why do we go there? Apart that it is a good physical exercise (still, running on a good day is much nicer, my moderately handsome husband says), it is (at least to me) a rather difficult task to complete every weekend. Edmund Hillary answered: "Because it is there". Gunnlaugur Júlíusson said: "Because I can". Why do we live then? What´s the purpose of life? "42"? No, wait, isn´t it "52" now?
Excitement: If someone thinks that going up the mountain is only about excitement, fun and new impressions, you are as far from the truth as you can be - climbing the mountain, even the smallest mountain is actually hard work with a varying degree of difficulty, but always work. But the result is always rewarding. The harder it takes, the more fulfilling it gets, which makes it an exact illustration to my favourite proverb: "nothing in this life which is worth having comes easy" (remember an analogy with life?).
In this respect a question "why are you climbing the mountains?" is as absurd as "why do you live?" - because it is small life. But unlike the real life, here every time you get to experience a strong feeling of completion, yet another test being passed. And what makes it much more valuable - it is a victory over something so grandeur and impressive, so meaningful and potent in the whole history of the mankind, that it becomes close to a cleansing experience.
And me - a woman from a faraway country - for the last years I have been trying to make peace, if not friends, with this strong, cold and independent Iceland. And every time I take one of your mountains, I get closer to you despite that you seem not to care. After first ten you looked at me with interest, I know. We all carry our lunch in the bag pack and coffee in the flask, we all go up for our different reasons, but on a good Sunday morning we are all united by a small victory, most important on ourselves.
At the end of the day, as William Blake said: "Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street".
So, it´s life. It hard and wonderful. Suck it up.
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