Monolith on the Mountain

Bivak Pavla Kemperla, a black beacon for mountaineers in the rugged landscape of the Slovenian Alps, was designed by Slovenian architect and alpinist Miha Kajzelj of the firm MODULAR arhitekti in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Situated at 2104 meters (6903 feet) above sea level in the Kamnik Alps north of Ljubljana, the bivouac under Grintovec was built in 2009 to replace an old shelter that stood there since 1973. The three-level structure is built on a concrete base. The long, vertical windows maximize the magnificent mountain views.

Its outer skin, made of aluminum isolating panels, is designed to prevent loss of the heat produced by the people inside. The inner skin is made of perforated wooden panels designed to wick body moisture out; so the interior always feels dry and warm. As a result of the vertical three-level concept, the upper sleeping level is warm, as the heat from below rises up.

The tiny, simple volume—2 × 3 × 4.5 meters (6.6 x 9.8 x 14.8 feet)—sleeps eight people.

Bivak Pavla Kemperla is dedicated to Pavle Kemperle, a Slovenian alpinist.

Photographer Jaka Bulc (@jakabulc) discovered the bivouac for us with his lens

He writes about his experience:

The first part of the marked trail to this bivouac is usually very crowded, since it leads to a popular mountain hut on the Kokra Saddle and then onwards to Grintovec, one of Slovenia's most frequently visited mountains.

The trail to the bivouac gradually veers off and goes through an interesting passage to a scenic path that winds its way across the steep rocky slopes of Grintovec. We reached the bivouac late in the afternoon and bumped into two other hikers, who were just getting ready to summit a couple of nearby peaks.

The monolithic building gives the impression of being sheltered by the natural amphitheatre of rock walls, although the bivouac sits on a knoll that gently rises over the surrounding landscape. △

Minimal Design, Maximum Protection

Icy, pelting rain, blinding snowstorms, radically shifting temperatures—Ljubljana-based OFIS Architects and structural engineers from London-based AKT II, in collaboration with students from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Rieder, designed Bivak Pod Skuto to withstand extreme weather conditions on Slovenia's Skuta Mountain.

The remote bivouac's three modules allowed for helicopter transport up the mountain and functionally divide the space into entrance and storage, eating and socializing, and sleeping. The interior design bows to the function of sheltering up to eight mountaineers. With a nod to traditional alpine architecture and input from mountaineers, form and materials were chosen to respectfully respond to the extreme mountain conditions but also to provide panoramic views of the majestic wilderness.

Constructing the frames off-site and fastening the structure onto pin connections allowed for a less invasive foundation (only the pins penetrate the rock) and left the mountain site as undisturbed as possible.  The installation was completed in a single day. Although small, more than sixty people were involved in the demanding project, most of them volunteers and sponsors.

Photographer Jaka Bulc (@jakabulc) scaled the tremendously rugged terrain to discover the hauntingly cool bivouac

The hike up

The unmarked trail that leads to this bivouac starts in the Kamniška Bistrica valley, just a short drive from the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana.

The gravel road to the trailhead is bumpy and the trailhead itself is somewhat hard to find. The actual hike is not difficult technically, but it is very steep and relatively strenuous. The first part of the hike leads through a deciduous forest that eventually gives way to a sea of mountain pine. Above the tree line, the terrain mostly consists of scree and steep, grassy slopes. The last part of the hike is the prettiest: it winds its way through the alpine karst, full of interesting surface features.

The bivouac was built in 2015 as a replacement for an older structure that occupied the same location in the previous decades. It is situated at 2045 meters (6709 feet) above sea level, underneath the southern walls of Skuta Mountain. The bivouac comprises three modules made out of glass, larch wood and various recycled materials that blend into its surroundings. It offers spectacular views of the Ljubljana Basin and the surrounding peaks, to which a couple of marked trails lead from the bivouac's vicinity.

We hiked to the bivouac on a perfect September weekday, met very few people on the trail and even had the summit of Skuta all to ourselves. △

Peaceful Panopticon

A hike to the Park Butte fire lookout on Mount Baker, Washington, tracks the forgotten history of the sparse observation towers that were once manned year round. Throughout the American Northwest, some are now restored as overnight shelters for solace seekers.

Walk-up getaway

It’s a torrid summer day. My husband, Andrew, and I are halfway up a trail in Mount Baker’s backyard in Washington. The heather flowers show signs of mortality, their normally bright, fuchsia-colored blossoms dried up into a brown, crusty shell. The open meadows are less vibrant than normal for this time of year.

The flowers came and are almost gone, signs pointing toward the end of summer. We are on a mission to spend the night in the historic Park Butte Lookout.

The hike is a steady uphill climb to the top, where we can see Mount Baker sprawling before us with emaciated pools of shallow water and red dirt staining the meadows in the foreground. The bright reds, oranges, and coppers are signs of mineral-rich soil and the fingerprints of the receded glacier on a slowly transforming landscape. We pass small groups of hikers, many with dogs, and come across a few larger Boy Scout and summer-camp parties. It seems the lookout towers fascinate young and old, serious thrill junkies, but also solace seekers.

“ It seems the lookout towers fascinate young and old, serious thrill junkies, but also solace seekers.”

Fire lookouts — a tradition of the Northwest

Two years ago, I had no idea fire lookouts even existed. After moving to Seattle, I became obsessed with them when a friend mentioned there were numerous towers across the Northwest. Built as early detection and suppression stations for forest fires, the lookouts housed fire-lookout workers, who lived in them full-time. Usually set on the highest pinnacle, with a 360-degree view of its surroundings, the lookout tower provided a prime viewing platform with sight lines as far as the eye can see. Being an architect, I was fascinated by their iconic design, beautiful in its functionality and frugality, and a new typology for me.

"Usually set on the highest pinnacle, with a 360-degree view of its surroundings, the lookout tower provided a prime viewing platform with sight lines as far as the eye can see."

Most lookouts are made of wood and must withstand very harsh climate conditions, being located so high and exposed to the elements. So I respect the simple, straightforward design engineered for easy duplication and constructability. Thick layers of paint have been applied to the wood, protecting its wear from the weather and, hopefully, extending durability. The wooden windows no longer open, since they’ve been permanently sealed to halt the snow and rain damage, but the shutters still function with some old-fashioned elbow grease. Contrasting today’s cheap construction and design gimmicks, the towers reflect an authentic practicality that I can aspire to communicate with my architecture, and they are a humbling reminder of how we should be building our homes and cities, reclaiming a simpler time, when objects and things did not rule our lives.

"They are a humbling reminder of how we should be building our homes and cities, reclaiming a simpler time where objects and things did not rule our lives."

The lookout towers in the United States were first erected after the Great Fire of 1910, which burned three million acres of forest in Washington, Montana, and Idaho. The fire resulted in more regulations and protocols from the U.S. Forest Service, implemented to prevent this tragedy from happening again. The Civil Conservation Corps (CCC) constructed towers all across the nation in the decade following the Depression. During World War II, human lookouts also served as enemy aircraft spotters, especially on the West Coast. After about 1960, more advanced technology made most of the towers obsolete. Fires were no longer fought via human observation, but instead with radios, aircraft, and finally global positioning systems (GPS) with satellite technology. As a result, the lookout towers were no longer of use, and many fell into disrepair.

Park Butte Lookout

Our Park Butte Lookout was built in 1932 and was in service until 1961. Its style is known as an L-4, a square fourteen by fourteen-foot (about 4.27 by 4.27-meter) wood cab atop heavy timber posts with a cedar-shingled gable roof and operable shutters protecting a full width of ribbon windows at each side. It was the most popular live-in lookout design and one that was replicated across the Northwest. It perches majestically on the peak of boulders, like Foucault’s perfect panopticon, watching all of nature from its roost. What’s fun about lookout hikes is that the towers come into view not long after you set out on the trail up the mountain, hinting at the reward that awaits, though there is still much elevation to be gained before reaching the summit. I look upward to seek a vantage point, stealing glimpses of the perfectly square object perched and waiting for my arrival, and I know it will be well worth the sweat.

"It perches majestically on the peak of boulders, like Foucault’s perfect panopticon, watching all of nature from its roost."

Many of these lookouts are kept in working order by local volunteer groups or organizations dedicated to preserving them. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Park Butte Lookout is maintained by the Skagit Alpine Club, a group of mountaineers who service the exterior, occasionally clean inside, and stock it with the bare necessities for emergencies—or even forgotten matches. I appreciate the remaining lookouts even more for this reason; they have that element of home to them because knowledgeable caretakers conserve their special historical and spiritual ambience. It’s an inspiration to us all to treat other people and things with just as much tender care.

Once ascended, my usual concerns are a memory: The bustling urban life I live in Seattle is far away, and I slip into nature’s meditative rhythm. There are no deadlines, only observations and reflections. There are no agendas, only submitting to the mountain’s siren song. Layers are peeled back, noise stops, nonessentials dissipate. Time becomes the passing sky, clouds, and breeze, not numbers on a clock or phone. I replenish myself with water and food not because it is noon, but because I listened to the thirst and to hunger rumbling in my stomach. The question of what to do next is replaced with almost no thoughts at all as I easily succumb to nature’s nonexistent curriculum.

“Once ascended, my usual concerns are a memory: The bustling urban life I live in Seattle is far away, and I slip into nature's meditative rhythm.”

These lookout towers are remote. However, some have cell phone reception at the top, which makes for interesting observations as we relax on the deck reading, writing, and reflecting. Hikers come up huffing and puffing because the last stretch of the trail is perhaps the hardest. The gravel trail gives way to larger boulders that require a scramble, and the climb is steeper than the average grade on most of the hike. The lookout is perched on these boulders, lifted with stubby wooden posts so it oats slightly above. After taking in the awe-inspiring view, many visitors to the lookout immediately pull out their cell phone and snap photos; a few even have selfie sticks to capture their group with the stunning mountain backdrop.

Our most pleasant encounter happens in the hottest hour of the afternoon. We had just come back from a mountain lake swim and climbed back up to the porch. It takes us a while to notice someone sitting at the shaded side of the balcony. We manage to sneak around the corner to find a man with binoculars, no cell phone or selfie stick. We begin talking, and before long we exchange contact information and look forward to meeting again. It amazes me what happens when we put our cell phones away and embrace the existence around us. Beautiful and inspiring moments are always presented to us. Will we stop and pay attention or move too fast and miss them? Perched on a fire lookout, you see more than the view. △

Retreat and Return

If you stand in the middle of an empty Downing Street, around 30th Avenue, in Denver and look straight ahead, you will see a light-rail station jettisoned beside the street and some low level buildings that litter the periphery as a long stretch of asphalt leads the eye to the horizon. Miles away, two grayish, 1980s skyscrapers frame a view of the foothills. You can make out the patches of snow and tree lines along the ridge and grasp for them. This glimpse of the mountains through the frame of the city, surrounded by civilization and commodity, creates the desire to run from the banal into the still, quiet reserves of solitude. Civilization and solitude, city and wilderness, the balance and distinctions can often be so tenuous and vague. Where does one start and one begin?

Filter of escape

When I think of escape, it’s about an ethereal atmosphere: where the light sending shafts across your face is just right, words fall with a satisfying poignancy; it’s very poetic and meaningful. It is the sort of moment where you imagine that you could probably write a play, or a memoir. It is often meticulously calculated and captured on social media. It’s this dream I sometimes have: his face clear amongst a hazy backdrop, and there is a golden glowing that moves warmly across his lips as they move. It is late summertime. I do not know what he is saying, but I feel the meaning of the words. There is a way that our photographs make things much softer, much more beautiful, much more inhabitable than they really are.

“It is the sort of moment where you imagine that you could probably write a play, or a memoir.”

How do we value the observing and interacting within landscapes without resulting in the dreamy nostalgia of escapism? What is the danger of over-romanticizing our nature, our hideaways?

Historically, “escape” denoted fleeing towards liberty, freed from an irksome or controlling reality. It was only in the 1930s that escape began to be used etymologically as a method for retreating from reality. To “escape” became “escapism”: the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy, modeled by escapist literature that provided a refuge for those harried by the changes in modernism.

Similarly, in the 1800s, the noun “hideaway” denoted a person running away or a fugitive but shifted in the 1900s to primarily be used to describe a place of concealment or retreat.

Modern escapism

Research on “escapism” began in the 40s and 50s, a post-war mentality in which escape was a necessity, and researchers examined the connections between media consumption and life satisfaction. In 1996, Peter Vorderer described escapism as the desire most people have, in unsatisfying circumstances, to flee reality in a cognitive, physical, or emotional way.

Geographer-cum-philosopher Yi-Fu Tuan’s book Escapism is a dazzling exploration on cultural manifestations of this desire. In Neolithic times, our ancestors may have built shelters and plated crops to escape nature’s harshness, but now we escape the urban for the suburban lawns and parks. Tuan speaks of Disneyland, glass-towers, ivory towers, and malls—all tenuous monuments to the dream, away from the uncertainties of life, often imposed by a nature we still cannot yet control. At what point, Tuan argues, is escape inescapable? How is escapism hardwired into our human makeup? If to escape reality is to create a malleable nature, then what aspect of culture is not escape?

“If to escape reality is to create a malleable nature, then what aspect of culture is not escape?”

Away, away

“The grass is greener on the other side,” runs the clichéd motto. I often search for discounted plane tickets the night before a large deadline or after a particularly nasty fight. I could move somewhere else; I could start over. I would not need to worry about these things if I ran. A sudden urge to sprint until I’m panting, until all the air has dispelled from my chest, to use my body, overcomes me. It reminds me of an Avett Brothers refrain:

The weight of lies will bring you down And follow you to every town 'cause Nothing happens here that doesn't happen there So, when you run make sure you run To something and not away from 'cause Lies don't need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere

Plainly, People want to “get away,” and I fully understand the desire. Ecotourism has exploded. We put rails along the edges of cliffs and commercialize Yosemite, all the while promoting an Airbnb in the middle of nowhere. Advertisements show us quiet beaches, toes in the sand, and shimmering waters devoid of noise and other tourists. We would be much better people, we are sure, if it were not for the distractions. A friend once told me, “Iceland is the one place on earth that looks the least like earth.” Beautiful, stark waterfalls and geysers against a backdrop of light yellows and green, an unearthly landscape, an utterly foreign nature. A place that seems to scream clarity from its minimalist landscapes. We escape to a place least like Earth; we want to stay there and soak in this alien feeling forever. We want to easily escape to places that are difficult to reach.

The desire to escape to simple and easy landscapes stems from a “milk and honey” mentality of the Promised Land that came to fruition in the literary genre of the pastoral. We’ve all heard the lines in our high school English courses from Marvell:

“Come lay with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove.” 

Pastoral paradise

Scholars have condemned the pastoral for its flights of fancy and its tendency to oversimplify complex societal situations for a romanticized and reductionist nature. A genre predicated upon escapism, the pastoral offered a comfortable landscape to run to when society grew too weary or complex. Centered upon the notion of “Arcadia,” there was a landscape and realm of nature that remained untouched, primitive, and pure from the ravages of civilization where utopian harmony and balance reigned supreme. The shepherd sang of a “Garden,” a lost Edenic form of existence in nature. Raymond Williams, a key pastoral critic, argued that the pastoral rests upon the notion that the industrialized city has removed us from the peaceful existence we once had in the country. For him, this is “myth functioning as memory,” remembering a false past that our ideals have created, where the present looks back toward a decline of simple life in the past. We have all heard it, thought it, felt it: “Life was so much simpler back then.”

We want to escape back to the simple, when we were carefree and life had no troubles. When all we had to do during the day was watch a river lazily float by us. My friend and I plan trips to Moab, plan trips to Zion, plan trips to Yosemite. We think of the tiny homes we could purchase, the vans we could remodel, and slowly tweak our plans to escape from the grid.

“We think of the tiny homes we could purchase, the vans we could remodel, and slowly tweak our plans to escape from the grid.”

Which world is blasé?

At its core, escapism hinges on the question of the “real.” What is reality and what is fantasy? The critics tell us to blur the lines and mix them up; virtual reality asserts that these questions are passé.

But, rather, might they be blasé? Blasé came into linguistic fashion 1913 to denote when the ability to tell the distinction between particular things is lost. A haziness of atmosphere descends and mixes it all up. I often find that my escapist fantasies are dreamy: edges are blurry and details are vague, what I am reaching for isn’t concrete but an atmosphere, a feeling, that my memory has recreated for me. I am always confusing myself with my real life and the life I live in my head, the lives I could live and the person that I could be. It is easy to escape to the mind space where I have it all together; where I am writing my next work from the porch of my secluded mountain cabin.

“It is easy to escape to the mind space where I have it all together; where I am writing my next work from the porch of my secluded mountain cabin.”

Experiencing within context

When scientists speak of one’s ability to perceive, they talk about “enframing.” As we view a site or landscape, we are compelled to frame and categorize it. Our site defines our reality—we may know that other things exist because we have seen them before, but, at every moment, we are only capable of perceiving and understanding what the widths of our eyes allow us. Yi-Fu Tuan argues that modern men and women, living amongst aspiration and pretension, suffer from Milan Kundera’s “unbearable lightness of being.” Life up so high doesn’t seem so real. We want something material, something to come into contact with.

“Life up so high doesn’t seem so real.”

For Tuan, the “real” is the impact, sensation, and felt pressure of nature: callouses on feet at the end of a long, arduous hike; sweat lining our brows; dirt under our finger nails. The real exerts a feeling of “aliveness,” where habits are shaken up. It’s to come close to the ground. The Greek origin of the word humiliation stems from hummus and in its literal terminology meant “to come close to the earth,” mirroring the story of Anteaus, a Herculean type man whose strength only persisted as long as he was touching the ground. Bring Anteaus to the heights and he was helpless.

If, as Tuan argues, human restlessness looks for relief in geographical mobility, our desire to move closer to nature is a natural one. We search to escape to a place of lucidity that comes from simplification. For Tuan, if an experience brings clarity rather than just simplification, one can arguably say that they have encountered the real. This is the difference between appreciating moments, atmospheres, and landscapes, and escaping from the pressures to a “blank page.” What one needs is not escapism, but rather a middle landscape that stays in touch with the raw reality of the natural world that remembers the connection to civilization as well. False divides have never helped us. When we retreat to nature, we are never going to blank spaces, but places with a palpable, experiential essence—ecosystems with existence long before we imposed our imagination upon theses places.

What moves escapism toward the notion of retreat and return? Action, honest encounters with nature. Escapism rarely translates into action. It is usually a state of mind we hide in. Retreat, however, requires movement and action, relying on a balance between wilderness and civilization. When we only dream of escapism or see landscapes like National Parks as the locale of our get-aways, we create an abstraction that makes it easy to exploit other landscapes.

“Retreat, however, requires movement and action, relying on a balance between wilderness and civilization.”

Return with clarification

Thoreau may have secluded himself to retreat to Walden, but he returned with an answer, a prophecy for a complex and frazzled society, teetering on the uncertain brink of industrialism. George Puttenham, one of the first pastoral theorists, did not see the form as merely recording the escape to a more rustic form of life, but as a serious guise for societal discourse. It had a didactic duty to return with clarification for modern life. It was about bringing back balance between the wild and the human.

What we need is a return to dirt, to the messy physicality of nature experiences. Not the coziness that we seek to escape to, but places of deep meaning that we return to for the quiet balance we desire. As William Cronnon argues about wilderness theory: If we imagine that our true “home” is a wilderness we can escape to, we often forgive ourselves for exploiting the land that we actually live on. Instead, a quality of “wildness” might be instilled in all the landscapes we inhabit, not just the sublime we want to run away to. Escapism, in this way, can be a dangerous nostalgia: despising the real in favor for the imagined. Escapism operates off a dissatisfaction and false dualism that can actually subtly encourage environmental exploitation: instead of seeing nature, wildness, as something that continually surrounds us, we escape to “wild” places, while leaving the urban to continue to die. We forget to gently tend our gardens, when the goal of our relationship with landscape is the task of making a fulfilling home within it.

“What we need is a return to dirt, to the messy physicality of nature experiences.”

“If we imagine that our true ‘home’ is a wilderness we can escape to, we often forgive ourselves for exploiting the land that we actually live on.”

It’s the difference between a dreamy pasture and the dirt. In the dirt, there is a beauty that has forgiven its sense of idealism. It is not about the ease, though this can be a benefit. While the reconstruction of the event can be nostalgic, often the journey in the wilderness is not: one sweats, scrapes their knees, huddles under a tree from a thunderstorm, or comes into contact with an animal much larger and more powerful. What we reclaim in a retreat and return is real action and the sense of our bodies—the sense of touch, of reconnecting with the environs that surround us. The retreat into nature can remind us to be consciously aware that we are not separate from nature but a part of and subject to it. We are wrapped up, intertwined within it—where then can we escape from ourselves?

“In the dirt, there is a beauty that has forgiven its sense of idealism.”

Wilderness therapy

There are countless organizations today that rely on this sort of wilderness therapy—bringing people out into nature as an opportunity to disconnect from the virtual and remember the real. While not all of us are ready to live in a van or fend for ourselves in the wild, retreating and returning gives us the pros of a connection with landscape without falling back onto distraction, selfishness, and a misconstruction of nature. Retreating away for solace, meditation, and a clean slate, remembering the environment and mountains that sustain us, and returning to tend for others in a harried society is the beauty of the soil.

In Norway, Arne Naess, the father of the Deep Ecology movement, pioneered the “Friluftsliv” movement—a conviction that an outdoor life can provide an antidote to the stresses of urban conditions. It’s not about an either/or but a both/and. A hideaway, a landscape, an escape that connects you to the “real” can never be escapism. It is an experience that connects you to materiality, a grounding that comes closer to the earth, an eye that recognizes beauty in the particular.

So here’s to the weekend warrior, the backcountry skier, the Chautauqua walker, and the Rocky Mountain National Park junky. Here’s to the gardener, the climber-conservationist, and the trail runner. Here’s to the people who aren’t afraid to shove their hands in the dirt, who aren’t desperate for a chance to run away but longing for a connection to the still, quiet moments of reality. Here’s to the mountains that are always beckoning us to come closer, get humiliated, and find contentment. △

---

Dirt

Antaeus reveled in the materiality

of his strength

which became humiliation 

like its root hummus

like to come close

to the level of the ridge

and feel the terra.  

To know that aspens

are rhizomes,

interconnected,

roots woven through soil,

nothing left out.

To hideaway from

the dirt is to

drift toward the sun,

risking a heavy pitch

downward, mutually assured destruction.

I am trying to get close to the reality of taxonomy,

the soil, the naming, the root.

Here is best I can say,

far from despair:

From dirt we came

and dirt we shall return.

Poem by Haley Littleton / Illustration by Ben O'Brien 

Behold

To photographer Chimera Rene Singer, seeing the world from a mountaintop is a lot like studying an image—geometric shapes shift, nature becomes imaginary, real objects turn into mythical whatsits. When we look at an image, the image is not the subject it depicts, just as surrealist artist Rene Magritte’s “pipe” is not a pipe. What we see creates an entirely new sensation. Examining an image can be like tracing dragons and ships in the clouds. The experience of climbing a mountain can be like studying a picture. From up there, we read the world as visual poetry created by the lines and shapes of unidentified objects. Our focus is redirected. As we face significant altitude, we also rediscover our acquaintance with the earth and air that feeds us. The heightened perspective awakens a grounding humbleness we rarely feel elsewhere.

"The experience of climbing a mountain can be like studying a picture."

A few months ago, I visited the Banaue Rice Terraces in the Philippines with a group of other photographers. Rain clouds hugged the mountains as sweat clung to our faces. We lingered to snap images and paused to gaze toward the miles of green, before our guide ushered us on until we reached Tappiya Falls.

“From up there, we read the world as visual poetry created by the lines and shapes of unidentified objects. Our focus is redirected.”

The mountains that stretched before us were make-believe. We were in a children’s adventure story. We were like birds, looking down at our prey, watching our young, and searching for food. The mountains, the gleaners, and the specks of rooftops were splashes of yellow, green, and red. The land became geometry and color. Rocks transformed into fascinating objects as we saw them in the grander scheme of a mountainside, and distant gleaners became silent mobile shapes that we observed without hindrance.

“The mountains that stretched before us were make-believe. We were in a children’s adventure story.”

Though the mountains visually distanced our perceptions, our intimacy with the world deepened. We grew aware of the land and air as living presences. The sun snatched away the water from our damp clothes. From a distance, the gleaners’ smiles and henley t-shirts looked the same as the ones we wore. The patterns within a single leaf and the layers composing a hillside melded together in tangible green. The intricacy of the details within the magnitude of the mountains held significance. Our bodies were a part of the Banaue Rice Terraces, just as the Banaue Rice Terraces are part of the Philippines, just as the Philippines are part of the same Earth as our home, thousands of miles away.

Susan Sontag noted, “In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have the right to observe.” As with photographs, mountains shift our assumed perspectives by giving us an aerial view of the world. We look upon the world with new eyes; eyes that observe what we commonly miss. Our souls are fed by its magnitude and our part in it. △

“In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have the right to observe.”

In Praise of Walks and Wilderness

Writer and poet Haley Littleton seeks out fragile moments of being that exist in nature—on trails, summits, and cliffs. Climbing mountains and wandering forests, we feel intoxicatingly happy and at once meek in our undefended bodies provoked toward the verge of physical capacity. The alpenglow illuminates the tips of the adjacent ridge as we crest the saddle of the trail. We have settled into our gait and into silence, elongating our steps to reach a lookout point from the gray, shifting scree field. A moun- tain goat follows our path up the rocky steps, and we pause at the top for a breath, a view, and water. This is a moment when I feel extraordinary happiness. It doesn't matter that in our ascent of Mount Sherman, we missed the peak three times, ascending three different 13,000-foot (ca. 3962-meter) peaks instead, or that our planned three-hour hike turned into six hours. I was content to crouch down and stare at the mauve and olive-colored succulent plants that lined the ascent to the peak and wonder what species they were. I was not concerned when or how we would reach the eventual summit.

When critic and poet Charles Olson spoke of poetry, he spoke of walking and of breathing. He spoke of measuring the line of the poem to the rhythm of breath. This “projective verse” called the whole body of the poet into measure. This is a form of “frolic architecture,” as Olson calls it, which one might consider artful kinesiology: to trace out lyric and language with body and space and mountain. By being a participant in nature, one is able to listen and then create from this space. We’ve all had those moments when we step out into the fresh mountain air: breathe in, breathe out, recenter.

It’s like Moab this past March: While back home was filled with uncertainties, rifts, and unpleasant memories, to stand upon the plateau and look across at the deep tannish reds, browns, and yellowish greens of Upheaval Dome—cuts made thousands of years ago—even in the sweltering heat and the sweat of the hike, I felt a peace I have not found elsewhere. I stood and thought of Edward Abbey’s words in the preface of his book Desert Solitaire:

Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets’ towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

More full of wonder than your deepest dreams, indeed. I kept looking over to my friend, continually proclaiming: “I can’t believe how happy I am here.” I understood Abbey’s fierce ecological devotion to the place. Preservation begins with appreciation; it begins with experiential love. “Earn your turns,” a friend always calls out, strapping his skins to his skis and hoisting his body up the incline. Another pal takes off to the mountains when big life decisions loom in front of him: “It’s the only place quiet and still enough to think.” One hikes fourteeners to prove to himself that his body is capable of more than he believes and that what others say about him is not the whole story. One of my best friends may have hated the peak I dragged her up during our climb, but afterward she turned to me and sighed, “I’ve never felt more alive or more in love with my body.” Once, on a backpacking trip with high school senior girls, one turned excitedly to me and said, “I haven’t thought badly about my body this whole trip!” I think of my skis hanging over the ledge of Blue Sky Basin, my toes hurting like hell, my legs are tingling and frozen, and my flight-or-fight mode tells me that the drop in isn’t worth the potential outcome of pain. But when I look up at the snow-crested ridges against the deepest blue backdrop I’ve ever seen, I push on and fire up my legs, reminding myself that this view is worth the discomfort it takes to reach it.

In an age that saw the rise of print reproduction, philosopher Walter Benjamin spoke of original art as containing an “aura” that reflects its presence in time and space: the sentiment contained within and the value connected to an experience with art. It's a sense that mirrors the way we sometimes want to touch a piece of artwork on the walls to simply feel it, as if to be a part of it. This same aura exists in nature: “If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch,” says Benjamin. Sculptor Andrew Goldsworthy embodies this idea of “nature aura” in his entirely nature-derived pieces made from branches carefully arranged, leaves woven together, stacks of rocks or ice melted and refashioned, all of which rest entirely upon impermanence. Happen upon his works before they are gone.

If human sense perception changes with historical circumstance, what does the recent technological boom and rise of virtual realities do to our perception of nature? Why does climbing a mountain matter if we can see the same view on Instagram? Why does visiting a location matter if Google Earth offers us the same view from the sofa? It seems this sense of feeling is disappearing as the search for experience is constantly digitized and commercialized. We pry a thing from its shell and market the hell out of it. We want things to be more accessible, to be easy to get to, so we pave roads on the tops of fourteeners and take all risk out of our outdoor adventures. Or, we consistently see pictures on social media of beautiful scenes and stay content to remain inside. But there’s something about the body that matters. There’s something about being there that we miss.

Ecologists speak now of a need for “deep ecology,” not just an understanding of ecological issues and piecemeal scientific responses, but an overhaul of our philosophical understanding of nature. Instead of viewing mankind as the overlord of nature, it’s about revisiting the idea that a give-and-take relationship exists between the human and the nonhuman, a relationship that thrives on mutual respect and appreciation. To develop this sort of appreciation for nature and the nonhuman, it matters that we actually experience it. For many ecological thinkers, walking among mountains can be the first step in healing a false split between body and mind. The grief at the destruction of a beautiful building, the ecstatic joy of a sunrise in the mountains—these moments stem from this unification of the two.

“For many ecological thinkers, walking among mountains can be the first step in healing a false split between body and mind.”

Fragile moments of being that exist in nature

It’s a question of place versus nonplace. In The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities, Richard Sennett points to the peculiarity of the American sense of place: “that you are nowhere when you are alone with yourself.” Sennett speaks of cities as nonplaces, in which the person among the crowd slips into oblivion, only existing inside him- or herself. Other nonplaces look like the drudgery of terminals or waiting lines or places where all eyes are glued to phones. The buildings are uniform, and the faces blur together to create a boring conglomerate of civilization. If to be alone in a city is to be nowhere, the antithesis must be that to be alone in nature is to be everywhere. Nature is a place characterized by its “thisness,” as Gerard Manley Hopkins describes it—a place to enter into that is palpable with its own essence and feeling.

But as we lose our connection to place, as virtual reality turns here into nowhere, we lose our ability to narrate our experiences of nature. Recently, nature writer Robert Macfarlane pointed out that in the Oxford Junior Dictionary, the virtual and indoor are replacing the outdoor and natural, making them blasé. When we lose the language to describe our connection to landscape and place, we lose the actual connection to these things and the value decreases, separating us from the natural. According to Macfarlane, we have always been “name-callers, christeners,” always seeking language that registers the dramas of landscape, and the environmental movement must begin with a reawakening of natural wonder–inspired language.

Perhaps the point of all of this is to work to develop more refined attention, an ability to seek out and perceive fragile moments of being that exist in nature. We must pay attention to our breath and our bodies. Wendell Berry, a prophet of the natural, writes that to pay attention is to “stretch toward” a subject in aspiration, to come into its presence. To pay attention to mountains, we must come beneath them and reach out toward them.

To walk is to perceive

How do we begin? By wandering within the wilderness. Rebecca Solnit’s book on walking comes to mind: “Walking is one way of maintaining a bulwark against this erosion of the mind, the body, the landscape, and the city, and every walker is a guard on patrol to protect the ineffable.” While people today live in disconnected interiors, on foot in wilderness the whole world is connected to the individual. This form of investing in a place gives back; memories become seeded into places, giving them meaning and associations both in the body and the mind. Walking may take much longer, but this slowing down opens one up to new details, new possibilities.

Brian Teare is one of my favorite modern poets because his poetry is centered upon Charles Olson’s projective verse and on walking. All his works contain physical coordinates, anchoring each work of art to the place that inspired it. The land becomes the location, subject, and meaning to the thoughts and feelings that Teare wants to convey. As we enter into a field or crest the ridge of a mountain, we perceive the sight of the landscape and experience our bodies within it. We feel the wind and touch the dirt; we see the edges and diversity of the landscape. Perhaps we have hiked a far distance to reach this place and feel the journey within the body. Teare says in one of my favorite poems, “Atlas Peak”:

we have to hold it instead

in our heads & hands

which would seem impossible

except for how we remember

the trail in our feet, calves,

& thighs, our lungs’ thrust

upward; our eyes, which scan

trailside bracken for flowers;

& our minds, which recall

their names as best they can

Sitting on the side of Mount Massive, on the verge of tears, I felt utterly defeated. Our group took the shorter route, which had resulted in thousands of feet of incline in just a few miles, and my lungs, riddled with occasional asthma, were rejecting the task before them. It felt as if all the rocks in the boulder field had been placed upon my chest. My mind went to the thought of wilderness: Was it freedom or a curse? What would happen to me if something went wrong up here? Risk and freedom hold hands with each other in the mountains. After a long break, a few puffs of albuterol, water, and grit, I pulled myself up the final ascent and false summits along the ridge. I have been most thankful for my body when I have realized how beautifully fragile and simultaneously capable it is. On the summit, as we watched thin wispy waves of clouds weave into each other and rise around us, the mountain gently reminded me that I am not in control. I am not all-powerful, and nature’s lesson to me that morning was to respect its wildness.

"Risk and freedom hold hands with each other in the mountains."

As in all things, essentialism should be avoided. We live in a world that tends toward black-and-white perspectives, and when one praises the wilderness, those remarks can devolve into Luddite sentiments that are antipeople, antitechnological, and antihistorical. This solves nothing. Advancements in civilization are welcome and beautiful; technology has connected us in unprecedented ways. But as with anything, balance is key. We need the possibility of escape from civilization, even if we never indulge it. We need it to exist as an antithesis to the stresses of modern society. We need wilderness to serve as a place to realize that we exist in a tenuous balance with the world around us. All the political and societal struggles matter little if we have no environment to live in. In a world of utilitarian decision-making, a walk in the woods may be considered frivolous and useless, but it is necessary. The choice to preserve or to dominate is ours. But before deciding, perhaps one should first wander among the mountains. △

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This essay is accompanied by the poem "Post Tenebras Lux" by Haley Littleton.

Post Tenebras Lux

Ascents often begin in the dead of night,Glowing orbs oat amongst the brush

And we step silently over streams, through thistle and rock. Traversing miles of bending trail before the light of day, One welcomes the gauzy lit horizon, Alpenglow softly razes the edge of ridges, Shimmering hopefulness after dark, steep climbs.

The peak crawls slowly from behind its veil above, Marking the goal, taunting with faraway closeness. You look back on trail only in memory, not in longing, Lest you be perpetually turned into salt. Set it down and look ahead.

You reach out to the edges, the pale lit blue places. They must be better than before.

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This poem is accompanied by the essay "In Praise of Walks and Wilderness" by Haley Littleton.