Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit

Robert MacFarlane's book is the most original take on Mountains I have ever read. MacFarlane's book examines how our view of MOuntains has changed over the centuries. Today we regard them as things we have mastered but three hundred years ago they were regarded as fearful places ... a bit of hell on earth. He describes how our geological and cultural view of them evolved as science replaced superstition as the basis for knowledge of these places. He uses loads of interesting anecdotes to illustrate his story as well as personal reminiscence ... he's an amateur climber. He is also a dream of a writer. I usually devour books ... but this one was so original and so well written that t took me a couple of weeks ... I wanted to savour it in small bites excellent reading for a vacation in the mountains -- or the beach.

Just think that mountains were once seen as the wild pimples of the world, good for nothing blemishes, protruding from the arable and the habitable.Macfarlane traces the change in attitude in Western conception of the mountains and how they became places to aspire to, to reflect upon, to escape to, to die for.Macfarlane's personal climbing stories nicely intersesct with the historical narrative as he tries to find those key moments in time which changed things, and how interesting it is to see poets like Petrarch and Coleridge playing major parts in this transformation.The growing appeal of the other-world, of places like Mount Blanc are beautifully described but I didn't think it needed the whole last chapter devoted to Mallory and Everest.This book is eminently readable, detailed and interesting, and freely admits it owes more than a little to Schama's 'Lanscape and Memory'.

From the opening recollection to the last sentence, Macfarlane's history of how mountains have been imagined left me aching to read more. The final words took me by surprise; I fully expected to turn the page for at least a few more spellbinding paragraphs. While the author's own experiences with altitude, ice, and snow are interspersed throughout, this is not at all a flimsy excuse to offer up a personal memoir or a coming-of-age story. Rather, his own stories effectively illustrate his larger points. The final problem of the plot, Mallory's fatal ascent toward the summit of Everest, lingers throughout as the essential riddle, and yet Macfarlane skillfully avoids letting that tragedy overwhelm the rest of the book. Every historical nuance, every detail of landscape, every observation of human endeavor is crafted through the comprehension of one who is sensitive to his own place in the historical development he chronicles. It is difficult not to recall Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams as far as the depth of understanding and the quality of the writing.

We humans seem to have an unquenchable thirst for vicarious danger. Mountains of the Mind in not just an adventure tale, however; it's also an essay-like exploration of our fascination with these nearly unattainable high places that have for so long provided inspiration and insight. Mountains are difficult to write about without resorting to clichés, but Macfarlane manages to wax eloquent without overwhelming us with his considerable descriptive powers.Almost makes me want to go climb a mountain...

I live in Colorado, and spend a lot of my spare time in the mountains. As a result, I've got into mountain literature in a big way. I've read a bunch of the great mountain works: Joe Simpson's Touching the Void and Maurice Herzog's Annapurna among them, also some stuff by Jon Krakauer (Eiger Dreams and Into Thin Air). I'd add this book to that list immediately, which I bought because I saw an advert for it in Harpers.Unlike most mountain books, it's not a straight story of an expedition. Instead, Macfarlane moves back and forth within time, writing about how people through history have "fallen in love with mountains". He also writes - and this is what tops the book out for me - about his own experiences in the mountains. The attention he pays to the landscape, and the way he writes about snow and ice, really spoke to me. Don't read this book if you want gung-ho stories of endurance: go to it for philosophy and beauty. 5 stars; bring on the next one.