On Climbing Mt. Adams
From a climb in the late 1980s
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Why climb?
For the new perspective on the world.
The earth, you see asserts itself. Twentieth-century frills fall away; the planet’s reality alone is apparent.
Cities drop between the silhouetted ridges, like so many Atlantises beneath the twilight mist. St. Helens sends puffs of steam toward a pastel sky. Mt. Hood sharply punctures the airspace to the South. A thin row of clouds extends across the Eastern plains – truncated beneath yet billowing upward toward a nearly-full moon. Adams looms behind, above. The prey. Or are we its prey?
A steady stream of hikers comes down off the mountain as you set up camp. Ice axes clang on the rocks as tired muscles mechanically carry climbers downhill. Yet there’s always time to chat. There’s time to share the experience of the climb. An instant camaraderie forms. Climbing is unlike any other trip into the backcountry.
Always, always, you realize that you’re planted on an image. You frolic about that which often appears painted on the sky. It’s like walking through a dream.
True, it’s arduous. Painful. Lonnnnng. But the climb is infinitely rewarding. For you take yourself to a place where time ceases. Where stillness and quiet reign. Where the earth’s, the universe’s constancy overwhelms, overrules all lives, all changes: it comforts. Peace. A silent envelopment of peace.
Thoughts from Mt. Adams: the 1990 Climb
As the sun floats down behind the sihouetted peaks, the mountains take on a new appearance: that of an ocean. Each ridge appears as a set of waves frozen just before the wave collapses upon itself. There is a fluidity here apparent yet unseen. It reminds me that the world is a sphere that constantly moves, and that all upon it is in a continual state of motion.
All is motion. Wind pushes, picks up, transports. Snow melts and the water carries. Molecules jump from sea to sky and back again. Insects explore the vast world mostly unseen to us. Forests evolve constantly. People walk, jog, and zip about. Circulatory systems hum, propelling creatures from place to place.
All is motion. Life is ever-changing. Nothing remains static. Nor can it: everything on the earth moves.