|
I lift up mine eyes unto the hills. Mountains are a wonderful metaphor of the possibilities, potentials and limits of ourselves. They are not notably caring or feeling creatures, and tolerate us very coolly if at all, but they certainly just ARE, and they seem to be the best that they can be, perhaps bringing that out of us as well.
This is Denali--another mountain with the name "The Great One" (exactly as the "Tahoma" previously climbed). But there are other Great Ones from the obscurity of those in Queen Maud's Land and Mount Vinson in Antarctica (one of the Seven Summits) to the Andean giants I have been studying up on and making plans for. Try on a few of these names and concepts for size: Chimborazo (20,703 feet) is the highest mountain on earth when measured from the center of the earth--convenient to its location in Ecuador (on, what else is new for a Kilimanjaro veteran--the Equator) and neighboring Cotopaxi (19,348 feet). I have been making Ecuador plans for some time now, and there is a booking of these peaks along with Huayana Potosi (19.870 feet) and Illimani (21,165 feet) in Bolivia. These 20K-plus numbers are getting into the jet stream where aircraft may fly but not too many breathing things stay very long.
And, I now have a solid booking for a Himalayan trek along the Tibetan Plateau in Himachal and Ladakh, starting from Delhi to Simla--the British summer headquarters of the Raj, and home to my homestreet's namesake Rudyard Kipling. From there I will be going to isolated villages including the Sangla and Spiti Valleys, and then to Kibber, the highest human habitations on earth. There is an isolated glacial lake at the Tibetan Plateau to which I will be trekking, bypassing the highest cultivated field on earth, in completing a medical mission to very poor isolated village people above the reach of most kinds of help. The trek will be along the Himalayan Massif, so I should not be short on hills to lift up my eyes to, and that inspiration will carry me along the next set of high points.
And what will I be doing to get ready for this "high adventure?" Within the same month I will be returning from an exploration of mountains high in altitude, but also in latitude. After climbing a number of Equatorial Mountains, I am switching to an opposite extreme. I will be climbing in the Brooks Range above the Arctic Circle on the North Slope in the Arctic wilderness of Alaska. This has been a dream of mine for too long to postpone any more years, so that I will be under the aurora borealis once again and listening to the cry of the wolf through trackless tundra.
There are still full many wonders out there in Nature's World of Wonders. A mountain is a good focal point for wonder. it can be experienced but not owned; not overcome but shared.