Prelude: Classical Mountain Landscapes and the Language of Ascent

Summary

Let it be yours to walk in this time to the heights

— Pindar, Olympian 1

A page or two into hisWhen Men and Mountains Meet (1946), the great British mountaineer of the early-mid twentieth century H. W. (“Bill”) Tilman allowed himself a rare, almost lyrical passage:

This would be my sixth visit to the Himalaya, and though occasionally I had qualms about such indulgence, I had so far managed to stifle them without any severe struggle. The appetite grows as it is fed. Like the desire for drink or drugs, the craving for mountains is not easily overcome, but a mountaineering debauch, such as six months in the Himalaya, is followed by no remorse.… Having once tasted the pleasure of living in high, solitary places with a few like spirits, European or Sherpa, I could not give it up. The prospect of what is euphemistically termed “settling down,” like mud to the bottom of a pond, might perhaps be faced when it became inevitable, but not yet awhile.

Readers of mountain literature will recognize, through the laconic wit of this post-Edwardian sensibility, one of those maddening passages that hints at but never quite explains the urge to climb. Instead, we hear the play of analogy — addiction versus muddy stagnation — to rationalize his abandonment of all good prudence: indulgence, appetite, drink, drugs, debauch, craving, relapse (“my sixth visit to the Himalaya”), remorse, pleasure.