A buddy once came to visit me when I lived in Bozeman, Montana. We were both at a point in life that airline tickets were a bit of a stretch financially. However, he knew somebody who worked for the airport in Minneapolis and arranged for him to hang out in the terminals for several hours waiting to find an unfilled seat he could purchase on the cheap. (It is unthinkable now, but in the late 1990s, you could do that sort of thing).
It took a while.
By the time he finally arrived, it was after 1:00 am and very dark, so there wasn’t much to see in the small pools of light made by my car’s headlights as we drove back from the airport. There were fascinating things to see looking up. I thought they were fascinating anyway. But Dan didn’t seem as interested as I was about how many more stars are visible in the Montana sky than the light-polluted suburbs of the twin cites. Both of us were too exhausted to come up with many other things to talk about though. Fortunately, we were also too exhausted to be uncomfortable in awkward silences – and the drive was short.
The next morning, the sun was bright in the sky before either of us woke up. We were in desperate need of coffee, so we headed out to find some. I walked out the front door of my apartment, then stopped and turned around, hoping to catch his reaction. Picturesque mountains are visible from nearly every square inch of Bozeman: the Gallatins, Bridgers, or Tobacco Root Mountains are everywhere.
He walked outside and looked around.
Nothing.
I gestured toward the Gallatin range, as if maybe he had missed it, and asked what he thought. “Nice” he said. “Where can we find coffee?”
I was a bit taken-aback, but I thought maybe he just wasn’t awake-enough to appreciate anything other than caffeine. I was still tired from the late night airport pickup too. So we set off for a coffee shop.
Each time we rounded a corner that would open up a new mountain view, I would wait for some sort of recognition. “Maybe he wasn’t impressed, because he didn’t realize there was more than the one mountain visible from my front door”, I thought. At one point, I think I even drove him part way up the Livingston Pass.
Still nothing.
Eventually I stopped waiting for him to show any appreciation for the landscape and we just got on with the day. But that evening, the sunset was particularly amazing. The whole sky was orange and pink and crimson – which looks even more dramatic with silhouettes of mountains in the foreground. In a last ditch effort, I pointed to the scene one more time, asking what he thought. “Yeah, I’ve seen a sunset before” he replied and went back to playing laser tag or whatever he had been doing.
I was baffled. I couldn’t fathom how anyone could be so unimpressed by something so genuinely impressive. So I gave up. Apparently he just didn’t care for beautiful things.
A couple weeks after he had gone back home, we talked on the phone (another thing you could plausibly do in the late 90’s) and he said “I didn’t understand why you thought the mountains were a big deal until the flight out of Bozeman. When I flew in, it was dark, so I couldn’t see them. But I flew out during the day and I could see: there are mountains behind those mountains!”
I was nonplussed. Mountains behind the mountains? How did he think it worked? What did he imagine was in all that space between Billings and the Pacific Ocean. And why is that the reason it wasn’t impressive from the ground? I don’t know. But for whatever reason, he didn’t have the perspective to see them until he was in the air. I’m glad he finally got the right vantage point though. How unfortunate it would have been to visit Bozeman and not see the mountains.
I suppose I had had my own perspective shift about mountains a few years prior. I was in my early teens when my family moved from Minnesota to Montana. The first time I found myself at the base of a small butte, I decided I wanted to climb it – which is to say, I decided to walk up the grassy slope of what I now know, in retrospect, to have been a large hill. It was the mountain-y-est damn thing I had seen in my life though – at least, up to that point – and my teenaged self wanted to conquer it.
The fact I thought I would be able to see, let alone walk, to the top of a mountain from the base is testament to my naivete.
I don’t think I had gotten 50 yards before I was out of breath. My cardiovascular fitness wasn’t great, but I knew I wasn’t that out of shape. It took me a moment to realize what was going on and then suddenly all the things I had heard about the air being “thinner” at higher altitudes were taking on actual meaning. My body was used to being at about 900 feet above sea level, but I was now nearing 4000 feet. And, in my youthful enthusiasm, I had started the climb too fast. I kept going though, stopping every hundred feet or so to catch my breath.
Pirsig says you have to climb mountains in equilibrium – and I was getting my first lesson about what that means. And about the humility needed to be in the high country.
For the longest time, the top didn’t seem to be getting any closer and I felt suuuuper out of shape. Several times, I almost just gave up. Eventually, I started feeling progress though – even excitement that I was almost there, so I kept pushing myself forward.
As I got to the point where the slope eased and started to round over to what I thought was the top, it revealed what had been hidden from me at the base of the hill and up to this point: I was climbing a shoulder of a much larger hill. There was a break in the slope; a relatively flat area that I had believed was the top. But it just sort of plateaued for a couple dozen feet and then the slope rose again – just as steeply as before. The upper slope was set just far enough back that the shoulder obscured it when you were close up against the hill.
I stopped and looked back down the way I had come. Then back up at the newly revealed part of the hill. I had only reached the halfway point.
I thought momentarily about continuing up, but immediately realized that what looked like the top from here might just be another of these breaks, teasing me. Anyway, I had already badgered my exhausted body for several ‘one last pushes’ to get to this point and couldn’t imagine finding enough energy or strength to make it any farther up.
I paused and looked around, breathing hard. And suddenly I felt small in a way I had never experienced before. It’s not that I had been humbled by the hill. I mean, I had been – and it seemed almost to be laughing at my arrogance in thinking I would just make a quick stroll to the top. But I forgot about all of that as my attention went out beyond the immediacy of the hill on which I stood and my gaze passed over dozens more in the distance – growing larger and larger until they were once again a mass of mountain in the distance.
I had known they must be there of course. (I mean, who doesn’t realize there are mountains behind the mountains? Honestly.) But there is a difference between knowing about the other mountains and witnessing them. Just as there is a difference between knowing that it is harder to breath when you are not acclimated to higher altitudes and actually struggling for breath. I hadn’t been able to see them from the ground, but from this higher vantage point, I had my own mountains behind the mountains moment.
The valleys, too, took on a whole new beauty from up there.
I marveled at the magnificent scene that had been hidden from me – unfathomable – moments earlier, glancing to the top of my hill again, wondering how much more I would be able to see from up there. In that moment, my thoughts were all about getting into better shape and getting used to the altitude, so I could come back and get to the top. And I started to wonder how to get to those other hills and mountains – and what the view might be like from over there. I understand why people get addicted to mountain climbing.
There are hidden worlds all around us – but only because we haven’t seen them yet. Once you find the right vantage point, it suddenly seems unfathomable not to have seen them. Oddly, it is often in the failing that we find the perspective to suddenly see what had been hidden from us before. But once you gain the perspective to see the mountains that had previously been hidden in plain sight, whole new worlds of possibility become thinkable.
Ultimately, that moment at the precipice of mountain climbing addiction did not translate into a literal high-altitude life ambition. I don’t climb actual mountains for entertainment. I do love to be in the mountains – to be surrounded by their formability and possibility. It is comforting to be in their embrace, to feel the lightness of their air, to hear their quite. I love to drive through the mountains, finding new vistas in and around every curve and rise. And I admire the tenacity of life on mountainsides.
I am content to marvel at it all from the base though.
There are other kinds of mountains that draw me up.
One of the ranges I frequent is what Pirsig calls the high country of the mind. There are lots of guides that can take you up into this high country on paths they and others have made. I have followed lots of these paths – enough that I have some favorite guides: Bruner, Toulmin, Carlone, Holland, Sennette, Pirsig, Crawford, auntie bell. I enjoy the places that their paths take me, but even more, I love the glimpses I catch of other peaks, valleys, slopes, outcroppings, etc. in the distance as I trek along their paths.
That is part of the addiction, I suppose. The high country is filled with extraordinary places I didn’t know I wanted to visit – and can’t know until I find the right perspective to spot them. Most of them have been there all along. They’ve been seen and visited by other people, so there are little trailheads everywhere, leading off from the well-worn paths.
Many people are afraid to take those little paths. I can’t say that I blame them. The small paths can be treacherous and it can be easy to get lost. And yet, it is a fear that, frankly, doesn’t make sense to me. For someone who is drawn up by the mountains, the small paths are best. They are the ones that lead away from the noise and distraction of the crowd. And you have to get lost in order to find your own perspective – to find your own way. And there is no telling what you will find wandering about, lost. The anticipation of getting lost is one of the exciting parts!
Sometimes it is nice to have companions for the lostness. Often, however, solitude is what is needed for noticing. I imagine that is true of any kind of mountain climbing. Lots of stuff gets missed when attention is divided. Then again, stuff gets missed when attention is too obsessively targeted. So I suppose this is another kind of equilibrium needed in the climb, between divided and focused attention. Covering the same ground multiple times, from multiple directions helps. Often, that is just what happens naturally as you wander about, lost. In any case, catching a glimpse of something you hadn’t previously known you wanted to see – something to wonder about – is the (entry) point.
The other part of the addiction to the high country – the main part, I think – is what lies beyond the entry point. Wonder is just the beginning of a new path. Beginnings are fun because they are full of possibility – but the possibility only gets realized if you head down the path. When wonder opens to a trailhead, there may be a guide available to help navigate the path. When wonder just points to a destination in the distance the only option may be to get yourself oriented in the right direction and head off into the the brush, knowing you might get disoriented and end up somewhere you didn’t expect. To follow the new path is to seek the possibilities it offers – possibilities of getting stuck or lost; of getting unstuck or finding your way; of finding new vantage points, new paths, new guides, new companions…
Hmmm, I’m sure I have more to say about all this, but…. I’m itching to climb soooooo…….
I’ll be back.
Eventually.