The Magic of Mountains

“I think that all the lasting things are grey:

the clouds above the mountains when it’s late.

When all around you changes, these things stay.”

(Grahame Davis, Grey)

For those who had the pleasure of studying geography at school, the water cycle will hopefully be familiar ground. Key scientific words like ‘evaporation’ and ‘precipitation’ will be etched into your minds, as will diagrams full of arrows, labels and illustrations of clouds, rivers, seas and mountains. The rivers begin in the highlands, originating in waters coming from meltwater or rainwater coming from the clouds bursting as they manoeuvre over the mountain tops. From these mountainous regions, rivers are born and begin their journey down towards other rivers, lakes and seas.

Take the Himalayas as an example: the rainwater and meltwater from the gargantuan snow-capped mountains feed the great rivers of the Brahmaputra, the Ganges and the Indus. In turn, these rivers provide the means for civilisations to live, thrive and survive and, as a result, are accorded with religious status and devotion. The great Himalayan Mountains are also viewed with the same religious sentiment. Kangchenjunga, situated on the border between Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim, stands at 8,586 metres above sea level. As such, it is the 3^rd highest mountain in the world. It was first ‘conquered’ on May 25 1955 by British mountaineers Joe Brown and George Band. However, they did not reach the very top, instead stopping just short of the summit. Why? They were respecting the wishes and beliefs of the Sikkimese who deem the summit of Kangchenjunga to be sacred. In the local Limbu language, the mountain is called Sewalungma, meaning “Mountain that we offer greetings to”. One can begin to understand the strength and the power of the mountain when one sees photos of its beautiful yet sharp ridges. Watch this video by mountaineer Anselm Murphy and read the blog attached to see what happened to him when he and his team took on Kangchenjunga, demonstrating the beauty, the power and the dangerous side of the mountain.

During Geography A2 lessons some years ago, the subject under discussion was the people of the Kondha tribes in Orissa state, India. The mining company, Vedanta Resources, were aiming to extract large amounts of bauxite from the region to help in the creation of aluminium. However, the major supply of bauxite was to be found in the Niyamgiri Hills. The animist Dongria Kondh tribe regards the mountain to be the god Niyam Raja, and for Vedanta Resources to open a mine in the mountains is viewed by the local tribes to be an invasion against their religion. The issue has attracted much debate and controversy, leading to charities such as Survival International to intervene on behalf of the Dongria Kondh. Watch their take on the issue here:

For some, the idea that a mountain could be a god or have sacred properties seems strange. Our traditional understanding of God is of an omnipotent and omniscient figure, often imagined wearing white and sporting a white beard reminiscent of a Michelangelo painting. Yet mountains have a powerful quality – always there and dominating the landscape. Their streams and springs provide for the local inhabitants, flora and fauna, they often affect the climate and have been an integral and imposing part of that society’s imagination since that society began.

It is perhaps not coincidental that mountains appear to play a significant role in the monotheistic faiths. In Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, Moses receives the revelation from the Burning Bush and the 10 Commandments upon Mount Sinai. Besides Mount Sinai, Noah’s ark came to rest on Mount Ararat as the floodwaters diminished, Jesus gave a sermon on a Mount, he was crucified upon Calvary Hill and the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) received his first revelations from God in a cave high up on Mount Hira. The mountains and hills all play prominent roles within the histories of the various traditions, yet the reasons for this are obscure. It might be to do with elevation – the episodes occur on places that have geographical prominence. It might be even simpler than that – these mountains and hills might purely have been the only places around where one felt as if he or she was closer to Heaven and closer to divine. Regardless of the reason, mountains hold a sacred and historical bond with religions and their adherents, as the Dongria Kondh issues demonstrate, this bond still endures.

What makes mountains so special? I would be inclined to position myself on the side of those arguing that the solitude and elevation of the mountain, as well as its permanence in historical memory, give them a spiritual dimension that other natural features perhaps do not have to the same degree. For me, Alfred Wainwright, the famous author and illustrator of the Wainwright walking guides to the Lake District fells, provides one of the very best tributes to the emotive power and the attraction that mountains have had and continue to have upon the human consciousness:

“Why does a man climb mountains? Why has he forced his tired and sweating body up here when he might instead have been sitting at his ease in a deckchair at the seaside, looking at girls in bikinis, or fast asleep, or sucking ice cream, according to his fancy. On the face of it the thing doesn’t make sense.

  “Yet more and more people are turning to the hills; they find something in these wild places that can be found nowhere else. It may be solace for some, satisfaction for others: the joy of exercising muscles that modern ways of living have cramped, perhaps; or a balm for jangled nerves in the solitude and silence of the peaks; or escape from the clamour and tumult of everyday existence. It may have something to do with a man’s subconscious search for beauty, growing keener as so much in the world grows uglier. It may be a need to readjust his sights, to get out of his own narrow groove and climb above it to see wider horizons and truer perspectives. In a few cases, it may even be a curiosity inspired by A. Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides. Or it may be, and for most walkers it will be, quite simply, a deep love of the hills, a love that has grown over the years, whatever motive first took them there: a feeling that these hills are friends, tried and trusted friends, always there when needed.

   “It is a question every man must answer for himself”

Alfred Wainwright

‘Soliloquy to Scafell Pike’ in The Southern Fells (1960)

A View of Castle Crag, High Spy and Maiden Moor
Taken by MB in June 2007