Mountains of the Mind: a History of a Fascination

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Macfarlane's "history of the imagination" is resolutely Eurocentric, and little space is granted to the non-Western mind (.....) Mountains of the Mind is, broadly, a cultural history interleaved with autobiographical vignettes (the author's agent told him to "put an 'I' into it"). The latter are nicely handled." - Ian Pindar, Times Literary Supplement An early significant step towards this is Thomas Burnet's The Sacred Theory of the Earth (1681), which, he believes, helped make us "able to imagine a past -- a deep history -- for landscapes". And so begins Macfarlane’s mountain adventure. He writes about the forces that make mountains and the glaciers that populate them. There is lot on our perception of them too, the overcoming of the fear that these immense heights can bring, the fixation of getting to the summit of these peaks. These beautiful peaks can be deadly too, the Alps claim one climber a day during the season, and less people die on Scottish roads than they do in the mountains. But those that conquer the peaks are shown the magnificence and beauty of the world beneath their feet. Oil painting is an appropriate medium to represent the processes of geology, for oil paints have landscapes immanent within them: they are made of minerals. McFarlane juxtaposes the cultural history with his own personal accounts. Some reviewers are of the opinion that the personal stories were unnecessary but I didn't mind his own input and I felt that it was a nice diversion from the more academic parts of the book.

Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind: How Desolate and Forbidding Heights Were Transformed Into Experiences of Indomitable Spirit Macfarlane presents the material well, though occasionally (a bit too frequently for comfort) he over-reaches: He didn’t even reach the summit although his group had one, notable achievement of sorts: they were the first to discover a climbable path towards the very top of the tallest mountain in the world located at its so-called “North Face” (thus, maybe, where the now famous brand of outdoor gears and apparel got its name).

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That was it - I was sold on adventure. In one of the reading binges which only the expanses of childhood time permit, I plundered my grandfather's library and by the end of that summer I had read a dozen or so of the most famous real-life exploration stories from the mountains and the poles, including Apsley Cherry-Garrard's tale of Antarctic endurance, The Worst Journey in the World, John Hunt's The Ascent of Everest and Edward Whymper's bloody account of his Scrambles Amongst the Alps. Clearly Mallory himself didn’t know why he kept on doing what killed him in the end. Certainly there was a promise of fame and fortune. Had he succeeded, he would have come down from the mountain a hero and a celebrity, his name forever etched immortally in the history of mountain climbing. But this could not have been just the reason because even up to now, after countless successful climbs by all sorts of people (even kids, the blind, old people and the one-legged), people still continue to climb it and dying either on their way up or on their way down.

Over and over I read that passage, and I wanted nothing more than to be one of those two tiny dots, fighting for survival in the thin air. Below Toby, the slope narrowed down to a chute which funnelled out over the precipices on the south face of the ridge. If I slipped, or the snow gave way, I'd slide past Toby, pull him off, and we'd free-fall hundreds of feet down to the glacier. Macfarlane adds his bit to the long lore of mountaineering, but his encounters with the peaks themselves have special presence and acuity. (b&w illustrations) I felt my feet freezing, but paid little attention. The highest mountain to be climbed by man lay under our feet! The names of our predecessors on these heights chased each other through my mind: Mummery, Mallory and Irvine, Bauer, WeIzenbach, Tilman, Shipton. How many of them were dead - how many had found on these mountains what, to them, was the finest end of all . . . I knew the end was near, but it was the end that all mountaineers wish for - an end in keeping with their ruling passion. I was consciously grateful to the mountains for being so beautiful for me that day, and as awed by their silence as if I had been in church. I was in no pain, and had no worry." There were books everywhere in the house. My grandfather had not tried to organize them and so very different books found themselves neighbours. On a small shelf in the dining room Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing, The Hobbit and The Fireside. Omnibus of Detective Stories shared space with two leather-bound volumes of J. S. Mill's System of Logic. There were several books about Russia whose titles I did not properly understand, and dozens about exploration and mountaineering.The book culminates with a chapter on George Mallory's ill-fated attempts at the greatest peak of all, Everest. Macfarlane captures the physical hardship of mountaineering well, almost gleefully recounting historical and personal frostbite-episodes, and the suffering that many have endured in their battles against mountains. If you want to read about a heap of travellers, mountaingazers and mountainclimbers, and explorers: read this book.

He conveys the enthusiast's passion for what is certainly in part an irrational pursuit convincingly, and while it (fortunately) may not be enough to get all readers to lace up their hiking boots and set out for the nearest base camp, it makes for a fine trip for the imagination in the comfort of one's own home. I didn't have any spare gloves. But there wasn't time to worry about it anyway, because the rotten snow which had just about tolerated our weight during the ascent would already be melting in the morning sun. We needed to get down as fast as possible. Macfarlane tells this tale using a variety of techniques, melding cultural history, geological history, and his own experiences as a climber. The result is a beautifully written meditation that attempts to deconstruct the gravitational pull of mountains, while often succumbing to it. Equally interesting, in our understanding of the relationship between mind and mountains, is the view of them outside European thought, a region Macfarlane barely explores. While Romanticism was given a free hand with mountains in Europe to shape our responses to them, in China, India or Japan, mountains were not seen simply as being on the margins of human culture.Robert Macfarlane is passionate about mountain-climbing, and appropriately enough begins his book on the subject describing how in childhood he became "sold on adventure". It wasn't, either. It beat a path of sound over the glacier and thumped its way off east, towards the pinnacle of the Zinalrothorn, where somebody else had died.