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Mt.
Denali Climbed June 28, 2002 by Vern Tejas with Alphine
Ascents
Think
globally, climb locally. I think this should be the
motto of the United Nations International Year of Mountains,
which is 2002, for anyone who didn't receive news of
the official kickoff in Rome on Feb. 15.
If
you missed it, that's understandable because this particular
celebratory year is one among many that the United Nations
has declared — so many, in fact, that one could construct
an entire new astrological system based on them. Infants
born in, say, the International Year of Older Persons
(1999) might mature late. Those who first encountered
life in the International Year of Volunteers (2001)
would be busybodies all their lives.
The
system would be complicated, however, by the addiction
of the United Nations bureaucracy to designated years.
For instance, I guess the Food and Agriculture Organization
had dibs on mountains, so the General Assembly got stuck
with declaring 2002 the International Year of Ecotourism.
And Unesco celebrated 2001 as the International Year
of Dialogue Among Civilizations.
That
went well.
I
resist most of these designations. I take my years more
personally. I may, in my mind, remember the Year of
Head Lice, which, as I recall, was followed by the Second
Year in a Row of Head Lice. But I don't create logos
and have events.
Not
that the attempt to concentrate attention on mountain
environments and mountain peoples is not virtuous and
praiseworthy. It just loses some of its oomph among
all the other Years-Of. It does, however, have a great
poetry project.
The
reading on Stone Mountain and at the Ebenezer Baptist
Church: April 27, 2002.
A
group called Dialogue
Through Poetry is coordinating worldwide readings
of poetry on mountaintops, called Poetry on the Peaks.
There have been or will be readings on the seven summits
— the highest peak on each continent. Readings will
be done on Denali (a k a Mount McKinley) and Rainier
and other massive mountains. But there will also be
events on lesser heights. A reading of Walt Whitman
will be done at his memorial on Bear Mountain in New
York State, for instance. And a group will climb Stone
Mountain in Georgia to listen to the words of the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from
Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi,
from every mountainside, let freedom ring!
If
that doesn't deserve to be read from a mountaintop,
I don't know what does. The poetry selected to be read
is of all sorts, lyric, quiet, loud, full of exhortation,
contemplative. The shortest bit of poetry was read Jan.
19 at the top of the Vinson Massif in Antarctica. I
would have picked something short to read if I were
anywhere in Antarctica. The verses came from William
Blake:
Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.
In
the face of Poetry on the Peaks, I feel a distinct weakening
of what I tend to think of as my healthy skepticism
and other people sometimes regard as "a negative attitude."
Mountains and poetry belong together, and I'm in favor
of this joint celebration of both of them, even if it
is connected to the United Nations' unstoppable "Year-Of"
generator. (In fact, Dialogue Through Poetry got its
start a year ago as part of the Dialogue Among Civilizations.)
Naturally
the plan for the readings made me think about what poem
I would choose, and what mountain. The poem came quickly,
"Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers. I read it for the
first time only a few months ago when a reader sent
it to me.
As
to the mountain, there were already readings on two
New York peaks, Bear Mountain and Mount Marcy. I decided
I should claim what I think of as the neighborhood peak,
Hook Mountain, in Upper Nyack, N.Y., otherwise known
simply as the Hook.
It's
not really a mountain in the way that Denali or Everest
is. The summit is just 736 feet above sea level, and
geologically it is an extension of the Palisades that
rise above the west shore of the Hudson farther south.
And its face: the cliffs were quarried for basalt in
the late 1800's.
If
fact, the rock was so chopped up that even that long
ago, the quarrying sparked efforts at preservation.
Eventually the Hook was saved, bought by the Palisades
Interstate Park Commission. The first part of the purchase
from the quarry companies was in 1911. In the ensuing
years, more land was bought.
But
then, in the 1920's, according to "Palisades: 100,000
Acres in 100 Years," by Robert O. Binneweis, the park
commission itself proposed to raise money by quarrying
the Hook to such an extent that it would have actually
removed the mountain. The rationale was that the Hook
had already been defaced, so why not finish the job,
make a nice road along the Hudson, create more usable
park land and earn money for other parks at the same
time. The plan did not succeed.
So
the Hook still stands, scarred, with dangerous cliff-side
trails and a rounded peak that offers views of the Hudson
south to the Tappan Zee Bridge and beyond. It is popular
with hawk watchers during fall migrations, and it attracts
hikers and mountain bikers as well.
I
went up the shortest way, a 15- minute uphill walk,
on a bright winter morning. This is not the kind of
mountain you take oxygen up; the summit is more suited
to a thermos of coffee and a scone.
Even
so, the temperature was in the low 30's, the wind was
blowing, and it was exhilarating to stand on the top
of the hill, alone, with the reflected light on the
river so bright it was hard to look at.
Small
or not, I think this is the kind of mountain most people
have in their backyards. Only a tiny group of people
will make it to the higher peaks this year, but anyone
can hike up the closest hill that has "mountain" in
its name and take a book of poetry. If you have the
time, money and lungs to climb Mount Rainier, more power
to you. If not, think big, climb small.
I
think you will still encounter some of the feeling that
mountains inspire, the feeling found in "Rock and Hawk"
as Jeffers describes:
This gray rock, standing tall
On the headland, where the sea- wind
Lets no tree grow.
And,
with any luck, a small hill and a little bit of poetry
will inspire you to want more of both. Just finding
out about Poetry on the Peaks inspired me to read more
of Jeffers's poetry and more about him as well as to
visit the Hook. I picked up "The Selected Poetry of
Robinson Jeffers," a book published last year, from
the library and found a man who was not fond of humanity
but dearly loved hawks and rocks.
He
wrote, in an introduction to one of his books, that
his poetry was "based on a recognition of the astonishing
beauty of things and their living wholeness, and on
a rational acceptance of the fact that mankind is neither
central nor important in the universe."
I
particularly loved the conclusion of "Rock and Hawk,"
when Jeffers describes the:
Mysticism of stone,
Which failure cannot cast down
Nor success make proud.
That
is the way I like to think of mountains: as immune to
human sentiment, as existing apart from the frenzy of
human activity.
The
problem was that I had also read about the history of
the Hook, including the unsuccessful plan to cut it
down and smooth over the stump. Jeffers reveled in the
permanence and immutability of rock. That is really
what I wanted to savor, more than the elevation and
the view.
Instead,
here was a case where the mountain itself was as fragile
and as much at the mercy of humanity's whims as the
environments and cultures of the grander peaks.
Jeffers's
poems sometimes seem to long for people to vanish from
the earth as a kind of relief for the sea and rocks.
In "Carmel Point," he writes:
. . . It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve.
No
doubt. The question is how much they will quarry along
the way.
Lofty
Words
Poetry
on the Peaks is coordinating readings on mountains around
the world this year. In New York State there will be
a reading of parts of Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open
Road" at Bear Mountain on May 18 and a reading of "Mountain"
by Louise Glück on Mount Marcy on July 27 and 28.
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