Mountain man

“ The rivers, cleansed from all stain of early turbulence in the calm of heaven-reflecting lakes, are seen to set forth, at first gently directed and compelled by the lower hills, for the great plain where each has its own mission of life and bounty to fulfil. We are no longer, like the old-world theologian, frightened into thinking our mountain a monument of man's wickedness and God's anger, or like the modern philosopher, oppressed by the bulk of the giant ”

“ And the great mountain did even as they asked and fell mightily upon the man, and this time the earth which fell was so heavy that the man strove in vain, and perished miserably in the heart of the mountain. ”

“ No foot of man had ever trampled those pure snows. It was a virginal mountain, distant from human inquisitiveness as a marble goddess is from human loves. Yet there was nothing unsympathetic in its isolation, or despotic in its distant majesty. ”

“ To the shepherds, of course, mountain climbing was not a sport but a business, and it would not have occurred to them to climb higher than was necessary; but who can doubt that, in the course of their daily rounds, the summits as well as the sides of the hills must have become known to them?
And if the tourist thinks the native cold and unimpressionable, what does the man who has been born and bred on the hills think of the man who comes on purpose to scramble there? ”

“ All the chief rivers of Europe and Asia have their rise in the deposits of the mountain glaciers.
In addition to all these important uses, the mountains assist in forming the character of man. The mountaineer is generally free from the vices of the plain. He is hardy and adventurous, yet attached to home; bold, and yet simple; independent, and yet unambitious of the wealth or the distinctions of mankind. ”

“ This love of living amongst the sunshine and upper snows is the true test of the enthusiast, and marks him off from the tribe of brag and bounce and from all the "doers of the Alps." It must not be assumed that the love of mountains is to be regarded as the first of human duties, or that a man's moral worth can be determined by the usual time of his arrival at a mountain inn ”

“ Probably most mountaineers would agree that the charm of mountain scenery is to be found in every step taken in the upper world. The strange interfolding of the snows, the gaunt, weird crags of the ridges, the vast, blue, icicle-fringed crevasse, or the great smooth slabs sloping-downwards through apparently bottomless space, are each and all no less lovely than the boundless horizon of the summit view. ”

“ See, yonder is Monte Rosa; how grand he looks in the still calm air of the morning. What a gentleman a mountain is! how independent of the changeful fortunes of the plains, where grass succeeds tillage, and what is barley to-day, may be a brick-field to-morrow; but the mountain is ever the same—proud and cold if you will, but standing above all the accidents of condition, and asserting itself by qualities which are not money-getting. I’d like to live in a land of mountains, if it were not for the snobs that come to climb them. ”

“ It stands, not only in the rock but in the imagination of the onlooker, once he has found the dignity and grandeur of the highest summit, for authority. Dignity and grandeur are the impressions which come to one from the north through the crystal clear, thin air out of the cool, snow-samite which still stands in the deep ravines even on the southerly slope of the master mountain, just as illusion and romance dwell in the violet haze which veils all the south in pleasing mystery. ”

“ If the great mountain, with its stony peak shooting up into the sky, has sublimity of one kind, the wide expanse of open country, moor, or heath, or desert, with its limitless horizon and many-shaded lines, has it of another. To an eye and a heart alive to the impressions of the beautiful and the grand, something to charm and to elevate will be found in almost every aspect of nature. ”

“ Such were some of the thoughts which this mysterious mountain inspired in primitive minds. To them whatever of nature was strange, beautiful, sublime, or powerful, was worshipful. It was not unnatural that the mountain should become dominant in their religious system. Sun worshipers already, what sublimer, nobler idolatry could there be than theirs for this priest of the sun in the land of undimmed heavens! Even the pilgrim of to-day would fain uncover and bend the knee before its tonsured head. ”

“ We come back from our travels, and the sight of such a well-known mountain is like meeting an old friend unchanged. But it is a one-sided affection. The mountain is voiceless and imperturbable; and its very loftiness and serenity sometimes make us the more lonely. ”

“ Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand. ”

“ On Mountain Tops the Mount of God ON mountain tops the mount of God
In latter days, shall rise
Above the summit of the hills,
And draw the wond'ring eyes.
To this the joyful nations round,
All tribes and tongues shall flow ”

“ Without quarter he pressed them on, over this pass; while they, unwilling to yield to capture, chose gladly to dash themselves into the valley below. One is impressed by the striking interplay of emotion with sheer nature. The controlling element which directs both man and mountain seems the same. ”

“ And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen from, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted horizon. ”

“ The mountain, however, was made for man, and not man for the mountain; and if the majority of travelers only get out of these hills what they are capable of receiving, it may be some satisfaction to the hills that they still reserve their glories for the eyes that can appreciate them. Perhaps nature is not sensitive about being run after for its freaks and eccentricities. ”

“ There is something wonderfully attractive about this mountain. The pleasure grows as one continues to gaze at the immense mass; harsh and stern and cold though it be, it excites awe and wonder as though here were the rocky foundation and substratum of the globe. This is the abode of perpetual winter, where ice and snow and bleak rocks exist apart. ”

“ He was climbing yonder range of mountain peaks—peaks which, though built of unsubstantial cloud, were more beautiful than any show-place of the tourist’s seeking—peaks upon whose shining summit the soul might stand and look out upon the infinite—peaks which might be climbed by the fancy of those whose fortune it might never be to see an Alpine height. ”

“ Instead, they were dismissed as not mountainous enough to be worth climbing. But this, too, was only a phase, which passed away in its turn as the feeling for mountains became more general. Men began to look in their home hills for something at least of that which they found in the Alps, and they were not disappointed. Indeed, the mountain feeling became at last so little limited that the mountain lover could find in every hill some realisation of his longings, and he might say, with a perversion of the old tag about humanity: ‘I am a man ”

“ In a paper memorable for the circumstances of its delivery, and the dramatic irony of its concluding words, Donald viii Robertson pleaded for a simpler treatment of our mountain worship, and claimed that there was ‘still room for a man to tell freely and without false shame the simple story of a day among the mountains.’ And this is what some of us have attempted. ”

“ The whole mountain appeared as one glorious manifestation of divine power, enthusiastic and benevolent, glowing like a countenance with ineffable repose and beauty, before which we could only gaze in devout and lowly admiration. ”

“ A mountain, a fossil from deepest geological horizon, a ruin of human art, carry us back into the perspective of centuries with a force that has become, perhaps, a little conventional. No imperishableness{52} of mountain-peak or of fragment of human work, broken pillar or sand-worn image half lifted over pathetic desert,—none of these link the past and to-day with anything like the power of these monuments of living antiquity, trees that began to grow before the Christian era, and, full of hale vitality and green old age, still bid fair to grow broad and high for centuries to come. ”

“ THE MOUNTAIN THAT WAS "GOD." I. MOUNT "BIG SNOW" AND INDIAN TRADITION. Long hours we toiled up through the solemn wood,
Beneath moss-banners stretched from tree to tree;
At last upon a barren hill we stood,
And, lo, above loomed Majesty.
—Herbert Bashford: "Mount Rainier."
The great Mountain fascinates us by its diversity. It is an inspiration and yet a riddle to all who are drawn to the mysterious or who love the sublime. Every view which the breaking clouds vouchsafe to us is a surprise. It never becomes commonplace, save to the commonplace.
Ice Terraces on South Tahoma Glacier. ”

“ When seen from high altitudes, a mountain appears merely as a part of a vast panorama or a single element in a wild, limitless scene of desolate peaks, which raise their bare, bleak summits among the sea of mountains far up into the cold regions of the atmosphere, where they become white with eternal snow, and bound by rigid glaciers. ”

“ Deep, vast canyons, all trending westwards, lie in purple gloom. Pine-clad ranges, rising into the blasted top of Storm Peak, all run westwards too, and all the beauty and glory are but the frame out of which rises—heaven-piercing, pure in its pearly luster, as glorious a mountain as the sun tinges red in either hemisphere—the splintered, pinnacled, lonely, ghastly, imposing, double-peaked summit of Long's Peak, the Mont Blanc of Northern Colorado. ”

“ Now both the 'pseudo-mountaineer' and the 'irrational man' err by way of defect, being indifferent to the true joys of mountaineering. But the 'mountaineer' is he who has this virtue in the right measure. ”

“ Yes; from the mountain of eternity we shall look down, and behold the whole plain spread before us. Down here we get lost and confused in the devious valleys that run off from the roots of the hills everywhere, and we cannot make out which way the streams are going, and what there is behind that low shoulder of hill yonder: but when we get to the summit peak, and look down, it will all shape itself into one consistent whole, and we shall see it all at once. ”

“ The mountain is seen to be vast, mighty, magnificent as it is not from any other point of view; its rivals are humbled, and its summit, gracious and noble rather than haughty, shines unquestionably the highest of all in the sky. ”

“ With the earliest dawn you awake, and proceed to the summit of the mountain, where hundreds, perhaps, from all civilized lands, are congregated, to witness the rising of the sun. But a dense cloud envelops the mountain, and hope almost dies within you. ”

“ We resolve to return to the pine woods to camp, and with tomorrow’s dawn to climb once more to the summit, to behold “ morning on the mountains.” The spectacle compensates for the extra toil. When we arrive, there is a veil of mist hanging between the valley and the mountain-top. We know that they in the valley see nothing of the summits, while we of the summits can discern nothing below this floating sea of vapor. How beautiful! It is as if out of a sea of golden-tinted mist are springing islands of dark-green, some of them crowned with glittering snow, and overhead a cloudless heaven. ”

“ Such an endless variety and such a grandeur is there in the view from this part of the mountain, that even those who are most habituated to the view always find it a fresh subject of admiration whenever they contemplate it ”

“ No wonder that this mountain of changing moods, overtopping every other eminence in the Northwest, answered the idea of God to the simple, imaginative mind of the Indians who hunted in the forest on its slopes or fished in the waters of Whulge that ebbed and flowed at its base. Primitive peoples in every land have deified superlative manifestations of nature—the sun, the wind, great rivers, and waterfalls, the high mountains. ”

“ The Alpine traveler knows that he will meet many a rugged steep, that he must cross many a mountain torrent on slender footing, make his way through many a gloomy valley. He does not give up, but presses forward with eagerness and courage, until he reaches the summit and gazes as a victor on the glorious scenes around. ”

“ Every mountain lover brings something new to the common worship: for each of us spells out a different syllable in the universal message of the hills. So these pages contain an attempt to analyse one aspect of the mountains, that aspect which is caught in childhood and youth.
The thread that binds the scattered memories of seventeen summers and eleven winters in the Alps is the half-belief that in some sense the mountains are not only so many tons of rock and ice, that they are something more than the ruins of chaos, and possess an individuality elusive but none the less very real. ”