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zealotnoob
Aug 21, 2008, 6:34 PM
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See below for cool stuff to read!11111!!
A Grammar Of Ascent
J A S O N L E E S T E O RT S
O the mind, mind has mountains . . .
-Gerard Manley Hopkins
I WONDER about the choices we make
to get on the margins of reality. There
are many realities, and many vanishing
points, but the one on my mind
right now is mountaineering.
I recently spent a week in Alaska trying
to learn how to be a mountaineer. I did not
succeed very well, and the details are not
very interesting. I finished the course (I
was enrolled in a course) thinking that perhaps
I am better off remaining a slightly above-
average mountain dilettante. An
occasional rock climber. A good skier
(preferably on teles, sometimes where
there are no lifts). And always within a half
hour of a dinner that requires a tip. Real
mountaineering tends probabilistically-
for the odds, ask an actuary-toward death.
As also toward the loss of fingers and toes.
I like my fingers and my toes and, ceteris
paribus, prefer realities in which I have
ten of each.
But I find mountaineers seductive, in
the sense of admiring them and occasionally
wishing to be one. What appeals to me
is not the courage (some would substitute
"foolishness") of risking death for a triv-
ial end. It is rather the way they use words.
They use them efficiently and compassionately,
and with a great deal of intelligence.
Which is how you'd want to hear
them if you were lost above 8,000 meters,
your mind and body were not working
right, and a voice from somewhere-a
radio, a rescue party-were commanding
you to live and explaining how.
I also like the way mountaineering cuts
through the metaphors that accrete to
"existential questions." Or I guess death
is what does that. Mountaineering's contribution
is to help one imagine death
vividly.
* * *
I am not a mountaineer, and there are
many vanishing points. If I had once been
stranded on a precipice of life, death, and
thought, and if later I found myself in radio
contact with someone so situated, I might
talk like this:
Reality is real, and you are part of it.
This is called "metaphysics."
You don't know how you got here and
you don't know where you're going. If
we're being rigorous (and we could get
very rigorous, but that would take lots of
words), you don't even know who you are,
or who I am, or what you are and I am, or
what reality is. No one else knows, either.
We are stumbling through the dark, to
what end we know not, and he who claims
to know is mistaken at best.
This is called "epistemology."
You should freely choose to treat others
as you wish to be treated, instead of shoving
with hands or words. But if you press
me hard on what "should" means, I won't
be able to say much.
This is called "ethics."
Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics.
These three are called "philosophy," and
thus is the sum of their content. The rest is
something called "prudence," and it can't
be explained very easily. But part of it is
this:
Be careful not to get lost here. Use your
head and your heart and go try to be
happy somewhere. In whatever reality
looks promising to you. Don't waste your
time poking around the limits of your realities,
the limits of all possible realities,
looking for what can't be seen.
And don't worry too much. When someone
tells you he's seen past the limits and
the news is bad, remember epistemology,
then shrug.
* * *
Some mountaineers cannot escape the
mountains. They enter by choice, but the
mountains become a tomb (literally) or a
prison (metaphorically). It is hard to live
in conventionally comfortable realities as
a mountaineer. The pay isn't good. Free
markets tend not to reward trivial ends.
Mountaineers are in this sense like philosophers.
All the same I am grateful for what
they have taught me. I am grateful too for
those who venture toward the margins-
notwithstanding this is lonely, and exhausting,
and sometimes dangerous-in
order to remind floundering intelligences
that they are lost, and to suggest a way
home. The way will be familiar ("circularity"),
but a rescued man tends not to complain.
* * *
One day we got stuck in camp. White
glacier below us, white fog all around us,
white snowflakes driven here and there by
incalculable forces known as "the wind."
Visibility was a few dozen feet. The only
color we could see was the bright orange
of our tents and the bright green feathers
on the chest of a small bird.
"Lost," said one of our guides. "Can't
see in the fog. Circling above us because
he can see the tents. Probably freeze to
death."
We nodded.
"Poor little thing." (This was muttered
quickly, with compassion.)
In my mind I said a prayer for the bird,
talking as I do when someone might hear.
Eventually it gave up on the tents and vanished
into white.
(This post was edited by zealotnoob on Aug 21, 2008, 9:10 PM)
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Feller
Aug 21, 2008, 6:43 PM
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Registered: Jul 28, 2008
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paraphrase plz.
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Valarc
Aug 21, 2008, 6:46 PM
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Registered: Apr 20, 2007
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TL;DR
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lostcause
Aug 21, 2008, 7:39 PM
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Registered: Apr 22, 2004
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Sweet. I like it.
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Gmburns2000
Aug 21, 2008, 7:47 PM
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lostcause wrote: Sweet. I like it.
that's cause you're a lost cause.
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zealotnoob
Aug 21, 2008, 9:12 PM
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Registered: Nov 2, 2006
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Post adjusted for demographic 
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lostcause
Aug 21, 2008, 9:52 PM
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Registered: Apr 22, 2004
Posts: 118
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I can live with that. 
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