Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit PDF
Preview Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit
Acclaim for Robert Macfarlane’s MOUNTAINS OF THE MIND “Of all the books published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of climbing Mount Everest Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind stands out as by far one of the most intelligent and interesting … in a style that shows he can be as poetic as he is plucky.” —The Economist “At once a fascinating work of history and a beautifully written meditation on how memory, imagination, and the landscape of mountains are joined together in our minds and under our feet.” —Forbes “A compelling meditation…. Macfarlane is … the perfect mountain guide through blue crevasse fields, ice walls, prayer flags, Sherpas and Shangri-Las. He’s been up there, and come back down through the foothills to offer us his thoughtful and gracious elegy, telling us eloquently the secret of it all, which is that no one can ever truly conquer a mountain.” —Benedict Allen, editor of The Faber Book of Exploration “Macfarlane, a mountain lover and climber, has a visceral appreciation of mountains…. He is an engaging writer, his commentary, always crisp and relevant, [is] leavened by personal experience beautifully related.” —The Observer (London) “Macfarlane writes with tremendous maturity, elegance and control…. A powerful debut, a remarkable blend of passion and scholarship.” —Evening Standard (London) “Part history, part personal observation, this is a fascinating study of our (sometimes fatal) obsession with height. A brilliant book, beautifully written.” —Fergus Fleming, author of Ninety Degrees North: The Quest for the North Pole “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 Daily Telegraph “There are many books on climbing and climbers, and this is one of the best and most unusual I have read.” —The Times (London) “An imaginative, original essay in cultural history—a book that evokes as well as investigates the fear and wonder of high places.” —William Fiennes, author of The Snow Geese “A crisp historical study of the sensations and emotions people have brought to (and taken from) mountains…. Macfarlane intelligently probes the push/pull of the peaks…. Sharp and enticing.” —Kirkus Reviews Robert Macfarlane MOUNTAINS OF THE MIND Robert Macfarlane was born in 1976. He is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and he contributes to The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. To my grandparents O the mind, mind has mountains … GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, c. 1880 Contents 1 Possession 2 The Great Stone Book 3 The Pursuit of Fear 4 Glaciers and Ice: the Streams of Time 5 Altitude: the Summit and the View 6 Walking off the Map 7 A New Heaven and a New Earth 8 Everest 9 The Snow Hare Acknowledgements Selected List of Sources 1 Possession 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. THÉOPHILE GAUTIER, 1868 I was a twelve-year-old in my grandparents’ house in the Scottish Highlands when I first came across one of the great stories of mountaineering: The Fight for Everest, an account of the 1924 British expedition during which George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared near the summit of Everest. We were staying in the house for the summer. My brother and I were allowed to go anywhere except into the room at the end of the hallway, which was my grandfather’s study. We played hide and seek, and I often hid in the big wardrobe in our bedroom. It smelt strongly of camphor, and there was a clutter of shoes on the floor of the wardrobe which made it difficult to stand up in. My grandmother’s fur coat hung in it, too, sheathed in thin clear plastic to keep the moths away. It was strange to put a hand out to touch the soft fur and feel the smooth plastic instead. The best room in the house was the conservatory, which my grandparents called the Sun Room. Its floor was paved with grey flagstones, always cold underfoot, and two of its walls were giant windows. On one of the windows my grandparents had stuck a black card cut-out in the shape of a hawk. It was supposed to scare away small birds but they regularly flew into the windows and killed themselves, thinking that the glass was air. Even though it was summer, the inside of the house was filled with the cold mineral air of the Highlands, and every surface was always
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