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katyab 's review for:
Mountains of the Mind
by Robert Macfarlane
I think I fell in love with Robert Macfarlane's writing because, in my opinion, nobody else so adeptly describes the way I feel about nature – especially mountains – quite like he does. I love his way of combining various sciences, philosophies, arts, beliefs, myths and histories to build a whole idea of something. Seems strange to use the word "whole" when the result is often sprawling and not always conclusive. But honestly, I think it'd be a mistake to find a conclusive way to bring all those ideas together. What matters is that those ideas all exist and are, in their own respective ways, true.
In a way, though, there is no such thing as the unknown. Because wherever we go, we carry our worlds within us. [...] So traversing even the most uncharted landscape, we are also traversing the terrain of the known. We carry expectations within us and to an extent we make what we meet conform to those expectations [...]. A raft of largely undetectable assumptions and preconceptions affects the way we perceive and behave in a place. Our cultural baggage – our memory – is weightless, but impossible to leave behind.
This is what Macfarlane wanted to do with this book, I think. To bring all these experiences of mountains together as a catalogue of truths. In my head, different areas of nature exist as multiple things simultaneously, and all of them seem true. Forests are trees – which seems simplistic, but trees in themselves are fascinating, and the biological network which exists between them and other living things is astonishing. I know they're just a biological system. But they're also a place where my imagination runs riot. I don't know how to put it into words. I remember standing in the middle of a dense pine forest (somewhere in Scotland, I'm not sure where) and thinking that something – something – would come out of those trees, and it would be inexplicable and not human and not any kind of creature that I'd seen before.
The same thing happens to me with mountains. I know mountains are evidence of deep time and massive geological change, but at the same time they are the realm of the gods. Sometimes they are like gods to me because they seem alive in a very awesome way.
No, I won't stop this flowery nonsense, I'm enjoying myself.
What I love about holding all these ideas of natural places in my head – as physical/scientific environments and mythological/folkloric/supernatural ones – is that they are not opposites to me. They have their own value to me personally because of the experience and exercise that my brain gets from them. Mountains are both passive and active forces. Macfarlane hits the nail on the head for me regarding the scientific kind:
Yet there is something curiously exhilarating about the contemplation of deep time. True, you learn yourself to be a blip in the larger projects of the universe. But you are also rewarded with the realization that you do exist – as unlikely as it may seem, you do exist.
To be surrounded or dwarfed by something that makes me realise my improbable existence is actually kinda nice and needed. The supernatural side of things does something similar. What I appreciate is that Macfarlane doesn't tell us that there's only one right way to think.
But there was something else in this book, which Macfarlane made very prominent almost from the start: death. No matter how experienced you are, "[w]ith mountains, the gap – the irony – that exists between the imagined and the actual can be wide enough to kill."
It was worth being reminded of, even though it scares me – maybe I prefer seeing mountains from the ground, as a mystery rather than something conquerable. Though sometimes the mountain conquers you. Again, two ideas in my head: you can be killed on, and killed by a mountain.
So while I absolutely loved the parts on the exhilarating power of mountains and high altitude, there was a lot on their destructive and lethal power. I appreciated that, but was still disturbed by it. (My own fault, really: Macfarlane might have described George Mallory's preserved corpse in a way that enticed me to look up images. Silly of me, but very interesting nonetheless. I don't think I'm going to want to climb anything like Everest after that. I'm not built for that stuff.)
So while it was worth having that lingering sense of fatal danger, unfortunately that was the idea that stayed with me past the end of the book. Seems a bit silly, come to think of it, that I based my rating of this book on a feeling of "it reminded me that bad stuff happens, and while I appreciate that warning, I still don't like it". Also Robert Macfarlane has a habit of doing much more dangerous things than I would ever dream of doing. Even living vicariously through his words is sometimes quite scary. I don't know. Maybe I wanted the book to make me feel like I had to go rushing up a mountain afterwards, when the feeling I got was hesitation. Maybe I'm just feeling a bit of a sensitive bean. That exhilarating feeling I have towards mountains will come back eventually, but never to the extent that I'll climb Everest. That's a place I'm happy to leave untouched.
In a way, though, there is no such thing as the unknown. Because wherever we go, we carry our worlds within us. [...] So traversing even the most uncharted landscape, we are also traversing the terrain of the known. We carry expectations within us and to an extent we make what we meet conform to those expectations [...]. A raft of largely undetectable assumptions and preconceptions affects the way we perceive and behave in a place. Our cultural baggage – our memory – is weightless, but impossible to leave behind.
This is what Macfarlane wanted to do with this book, I think. To bring all these experiences of mountains together as a catalogue of truths. In my head, different areas of nature exist as multiple things simultaneously, and all of them seem true. Forests are trees – which seems simplistic, but trees in themselves are fascinating, and the biological network which exists between them and other living things is astonishing. I know they're just a biological system. But they're also a place where my imagination runs riot. I don't know how to put it into words. I remember standing in the middle of a dense pine forest (somewhere in Scotland, I'm not sure where) and thinking that something – something – would come out of those trees, and it would be inexplicable and not human and not any kind of creature that I'd seen before.
The same thing happens to me with mountains. I know mountains are evidence of deep time and massive geological change, but at the same time they are the realm of the gods. Sometimes they are like gods to me because they seem alive in a very awesome way.
No, I won't stop this flowery nonsense, I'm enjoying myself.
What I love about holding all these ideas of natural places in my head – as physical/scientific environments and mythological/folkloric/supernatural ones – is that they are not opposites to me. They have their own value to me personally because of the experience and exercise that my brain gets from them. Mountains are both passive and active forces. Macfarlane hits the nail on the head for me regarding the scientific kind:
Yet there is something curiously exhilarating about the contemplation of deep time. True, you learn yourself to be a blip in the larger projects of the universe. But you are also rewarded with the realization that you do exist – as unlikely as it may seem, you do exist.
To be surrounded or dwarfed by something that makes me realise my improbable existence is actually kinda nice and needed. The supernatural side of things does something similar. What I appreciate is that Macfarlane doesn't tell us that there's only one right way to think.
But there was something else in this book, which Macfarlane made very prominent almost from the start: death. No matter how experienced you are, "[w]ith mountains, the gap – the irony – that exists between the imagined and the actual can be wide enough to kill."
It was worth being reminded of, even though it scares me – maybe I prefer seeing mountains from the ground, as a mystery rather than something conquerable. Though sometimes the mountain conquers you. Again, two ideas in my head: you can be killed on, and killed by a mountain.
So while I absolutely loved the parts on the exhilarating power of mountains and high altitude, there was a lot on their destructive and lethal power. I appreciated that, but was still disturbed by it. (My own fault, really: Macfarlane might have described George Mallory's preserved corpse in a way that enticed me to look up images. Silly of me, but very interesting nonetheless. I don't think I'm going to want to climb anything like Everest after that. I'm not built for that stuff.)
So while it was worth having that lingering sense of fatal danger, unfortunately that was the idea that stayed with me past the end of the book. Seems a bit silly, come to think of it, that I based my rating of this book on a feeling of "it reminded me that bad stuff happens, and while I appreciate that warning, I still don't like it". Also Robert Macfarlane has a habit of doing much more dangerous things than I would ever dream of doing. Even living vicariously through his words is sometimes quite scary. I don't know. Maybe I wanted the book to make me feel like I had to go rushing up a mountain afterwards, when the feeling I got was hesitation. Maybe I'm just feeling a bit of a sensitive bean. That exhilarating feeling I have towards mountains will come back eventually, but never to the extent that I'll climb Everest. That's a place I'm happy to leave untouched.