Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Looking Up


One can, of course, overdo metaphor in the mountains.

But I love this quote from Wainwright on Scafell Pike (the highest of these fells): "...Scafell's top is a most excellent viewpoint and additionally, a place for reverie, especially when reached from the north, for here there is awareness that one has come at last to the outer edge of the mountains and that, beyond, lie only declining foothills to the sea. Vaguely, in the mind of a fellwalker long past his youth, there arises a feeling of sadness, as though at this point the mountains are behind, in the past, and ahead is a commonplace world, a future in which mountains have no part, his own future...."

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