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Spencer Adkisson
Trad climber
Reno, NV
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Topic Author's Original Post - May 13, 2008 - 01:46am PT
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Maybe it's the beautiful spring weather, or the unloading of the burden of school, or the chemical rush of physical exercise, or the Makers Mark, but I feel like it is worthy of a few moments to ponder the words of those who have a way with them, and the timeless insight that they may have in our lives today. This could have been a John Muir appreciation thread, but there are so many others who also deserve to have their words heard and pondered, that it should be kept open.
In keeping with my ubiquitious Libra self, I'll start with a commentary on the SFHD providing arguements both pro and con. Then I'll offer a few words on Climbers as a whole.
Pro:
I feel sure that if you were to see how happy I am, and how ardently I am seeking a knowledge of the rocks you could not call me away, but would gladly let me go with only God and his written rocks to guide me. You would not think of calling me to make machines or a home, or of rubbing me against other minds, or of setting me up for measurement.------John Muir 1871
Con:
How assiduously Nature seeks to remedy these labored art blunders. She corrodes the iron and marble, and gradually levels the hill which is always heaped up, as if a sufficiently heavy quantity of clouds could not be laid upon the dead. Arching grasses come one by one; seeds come flying on downy wings, silent as fate, to give life's dearest beauty for the ashes of art; and strong evergreen arms laden with ferns and tillandsia drapery are spread over all--Life at work everywhere, obliterating all memory of the confusion of man.--John Muir 1867
Climbers:
"Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing"
And finally something to dream about tonight:
"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn, and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn as the round Earth rolls.-----John Muir 1913
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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May 13, 2008 - 01:54am PT
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"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings."
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jewedlaw
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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May 13, 2008 - 01:58am PT
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"When I first caught sight of it over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been weary since." - Muir
"Climb the mountain and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while care will drop off like Autumn leaves." - Muir
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Spencer Adkisson
Trad climber
Reno, NV
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Topic Author's Reply - May 13, 2008 - 02:07am PT
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...One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made, That this is still the morning of creation. That mountains, long concieved, are now being born, brought to life by the glaciers, channels traced for rivers, basins hollowed for lakes. That moraine soil is being ground and outspread for coming plants...while the finest part of the grist, seen hastening far out to sea, is being stored away in the darkness, and builded, particle on particle, cementing and crystallizing to make the mountains and valleys and plains of other landscapes, which, like fluent pulsing water, rise and fall, and pass through the ages in endless rhythm and beauty.-----John Muir 1879
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nita
climber
chica from chico, I don't claim to be a daisy
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May 13, 2008 - 11:50am PT
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After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.
Walt Whitman
Be curious, not judgmental.
Walt Whitman
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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May 13, 2008 - 11:54am PT
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. . . And miles to go, before I sleep.
Robert Frost
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Maysho
climber
Truckee, CA
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Sep 24, 2009 - 02:13am PT
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this ones for you and your pals t*r...
“If the creative fires within our young people are not fed, nurtured, and added to the communal hearth, they will burn down the structures of society just to feel the warmth.”
Joseph Chilton Pierce
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adam d
climber
closer to waves than rock
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Sep 24, 2009 - 02:24am PT
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"Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am- a reluctant enthusiast...a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep you brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and i promise you this much; I promise you this sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards."
-Ed Abbey
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Timmc
climber
BC
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Sep 24, 2009 - 02:25am PT
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Everythings important and nothing matters
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Maysho
climber
Truckee, CA
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Sep 24, 2009 - 02:26am PT
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“Suddenly my danger broke upon me. Faith and hope failed, suffered eclipse. Cold sweat broke out. My senses filled as with smoke. I was alone, cut off from all affinity. Would I fall to the glacier below? Well, no matter…”
“Then as if my body, finding the ordinary dominion of mind insufficient, pushed it aside, I became possessed of a new sense. My eyes became preternaturally clear and every rift, flaw, niche and tablet in the cliff ahead were seen as through a microscope.
At any rate the danger was safely passed, I scarce know how, and shortly after noon I leaped with wild freedom upon the highest crag of the summit. Had I been born aloft upon wings, my deliverance could not have been more complete.”
John Muir
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 24, 2009 - 04:10am PT
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Sweet stuff. Thanks for those wonderful quotes guys and gals. I've never really read any of John Muir's stuff, I'll have to remedy that.
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hooblie
climber
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Sep 24, 2009 - 07:32am PT
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Bare´sark
n. 1. A Berserker, or Norse warrior who fought without armor, or shirt of mail. adv. Without armor or mail.
were i to have attended lynnie's toast for the fallen, and mustered sufficient courage, this i would like to have offered:
To A Young Artist
It is good for strength not to be merciful
To its own weakness, good for the deep urn to run
over, good to explore
The peaks and the deeps, who can endure it,
Good to be hurt, who can be healed afterward: but
you that have whetted consciousness
Too bitter an edge, too keenly daring,
So that the color of a leaf can make you tremble
and your own thoughts like harriers
Tear the live mind: were your bones mountains,
Your blood rivers to endure it? and all that labor
of discipline labors to death.
Delight is exquisite, pain is more present;
You have sold the armor, you have bought shining
with burning, one should be stronger than
strength
To fight baresark in the stabbing field
In the rage of the stars: I tell you unconsciousness
is the treasure, the tower, the fortress;
Referred to that one may live anything;
The temple and the tower: poor dancer on the flints
and shards in the temple porches, turn home.
Robinson Jeffers
http://www.poemhunter.com/robinson-jeffers/
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sully
Trad climber
CA
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Sep 24, 2009 - 08:06am PT
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"One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."
Robert Frost
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Maysho
climber
Truckee, CA
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Sep 24, 2009 - 08:10am PT
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How To Own Land
Find a spot and sit there
until the grass begins
to nose between your thighs.
Climb to the top
of a pine and drink
the wind’s green breath.
Track the stream through alder and scrub,
trade speech
for that cold sweet babble.
Gather sticks and spin them into fire.
Watch the smoke spiral into darkness.
Dream that the animals find you.
They weave your hair into warm cloth,
string your teeth on necklaces,
wrap your skin soft around their feet.
Wake to the silence
of your own scattered bones.
Watch them whiten in the sun.
When they have fallen to powder
And blown away,
The land will be yours.
-----Morgan Farley
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Sep 24, 2009 - 08:11am PT
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hope with the sober part of your heart that all is.
hope with the remainder... with the wise lobes that all is well.
otherwise, just endure the transitions between those lovely silences.
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sully
Trad climber
CA
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Sep 24, 2009 - 08:25am PT
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"I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven."
Walt Whitman
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Sep 24, 2009 - 08:46am PT
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actually.
sighhhghhh. wisdom only occurs in thoughts.
this "wisdom" is completely lost in the translation from thoughts to words.
thus wisdom cannot be recorded in words.
words are empty little echos of the extinct thought that inspired them.
here. watch:
pursuit of enlightenment is denying chaos its rightful place between your ears.
introduce entropy to your dreams. let your dreams tend toward chaos.
only then will your journey through be well-mapped.....
..... you're hearing little echos of a befuddled, though beautiful charlatan.
now go get lost out of thought.
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Sep 24, 2009 - 11:25am PT
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Tom Higgins nailed some near perfect words on the thread about the late Frank Sacherer -especially poignant is the last paragraph (bold and italics mine, all words copied word for word) ....
"A Small Benediction
There is no Frank anymore, and hasn’t been for some time, meaning we are here discussing the memory of Frank. Yes, there’s the Frank in a few books and pictures and a grave in Chamonix holding remains which once held Frank. But really, once I realize (again) Sacherer is gone and Kamps and Pratt to name a few who most influenced me, I realize they all are only in my mind now. Then it dawns on me they were just so when they were alive. These climbers, all climbers, are only our view of them, the intake and processing of the talks, the movement on rock, the laughs, the glory, the bickering, the ranking of feats, the unraveling of how they were and why -- all only fleeting sparks between minds working just as now, here, on this thread, back and forth.
It takes some time to grasp there really are no climbers or even climbs other than our making, naming and assessing of each, our passing along witnessing all to our joy, wonder and sorrow. All is only low voltage firing of neurons between our ears, tiny electronic summaries of the earthly formations we climb upon, of the people with whom we climb, of even our selves moving along as before a mirror, time all the while clicking. A man named Frank we knew and now remember ended at a little square of ground in Chamonix which, Jan said, she and Frank’s family have not yet been able to visit. And yet here we all are making the only visit we ever can make – in our minds.
And so my small benediction: let us be most humbled, thankful and awestruck at the prize of consciousness, the sunny days on what we call rock and mountains with others we call friends, the noble globe itself only a dot in the vast swirl of matter and time, in the great physics of it all Frank pondered, the same which pounds and baffles each of us under a clear night sky. And there, looking up, perhaps I am not alone making a quiet vow to hold more tightly to good friendship and love before sleeping Frank’s sleep.
Tom Higgins
LongAgo "
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Maysho
climber
Truckee, CA
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Sep 24, 2009 - 12:18pm PT
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When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me and then snaps his purse shut…
When death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
And I consider eternity as another possibility,
And I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular; and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage and something precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom taking the earth into my arms.
When it’s over I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world…
Mary Oliver
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Sep 25, 2009 - 08:14am PT
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f*#k.
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