The mountain precedes the man — its existence predates the dawn of mankind by close to 60 million years; and the mountaineer who accepts that fact, the climber who allows the peak to humble him before it humiliates him in a lethal avalanche of snow and ice, that is the man who reaches the summit.
Consider that chronology.
Physicists think they can explain it, geologists know they can verify it and mathematicians prove they can tabulate it; but it is beyond our ability to imagine 60 million years; because, due to the finite nature of the human brain and the photographic negatives and the auditory reels from the fragments of man’s youth and adventure, as well as the misfiring of neurons and the sense of confusion of a patriarch in winter, 60 million years is just a number.
And yet, the mountain is there.
It stands 29,029 feet above sea level.
At 26,000 feet, climbers enter the Death Zone.
At that altitude, it takes most climbers 12 hours to walk a mile.
The humble man plants his flag atop the peak, but he only celebrates when he returns to safety.
Put another way, here is some counsel from a political mountaineer who “stood on pinnacles that dissolved in the precipice.”
It is only a beginning, always. The young must know it; the old must know it. It must always sustain us, because the greatness comes not when things go always good for you, but the greatness comes and you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes, because only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.
