Zenwind

Lord of the Rings & Philosophy

2009-01-08T19:28:00.002+07:00

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Review of *The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All.* 2003 edited by Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson. Open Court Publishing.
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This is Volume #5 in a very interesting series from Open Court called “Popular Culture and Philosophy.” Series Editor is William Irwin.
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The book is dedicated: “To the entwives, wherever they may roam.” If this resonates with you, you may well love this book.
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If you are familiar with and enjoy J.R.R. Tolkien’s works connected with *The Lord of the Rings* and if you either have some small experience in reading philosophy or want to plunge into a widely diverse selection of philosophical writings for the first time, this book is a delight. There are 17 contributing authors, all of whom are professional philosophers and/or theologians who love Tolkien’s works and know them intimately. Each essay is about 10 pages.
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Because of the variety of philosophical viewpoints here, you will not agree with every essay. Indeed, I do not agree with even Tolkien on many points. You will find existentialists, theologians, greens, Aristotelians, and representatives from many other viewpoints. But every essay is interesting and thoughtful. I have always considered it to be fruitful to read philosophers and philosophies that I am in disagreement with. I consider this in many cases to be an exercise in “mind-stretching,” although in some cases it does seem more like being stretched upon the torture rack. Good for the mind, at any rate. (“That which does not kill me makes me stronger.” Nietzsche.)
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I am very much a fan of Tolkien. Before reading this book for the first time, I had read Tolkien’s *The Hobbit* and *The Lord of the Rings* (TLOTR) a number of times. I watched the excellent Peter Jackson films of TLOTR more times than I can count, along with the extra “Appendices” special feature interviews and commentaries in the Special Extended DVD Editions. Also, I have had the benefit throughout the years of many conversations with family members who are longtime diehard Tolkien fans.
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This volume of *TLOTR and Philosophy* was very understandable with my basic background of Tolkien reading (along with my undergraduate major studies in philosophy). But the authors also mention some of Tolkien’s other writings, *The Silmarillion* in particular, as well as material from his letters and essays. So, after I read this volume of *TLOTR and Philosophy,* I went on to read *The Silmarillion,* which is a much different reading experience, as it is rather unfinished and more like an epic than the adult fairy tale that TLOTR is. But it did give me a richer background on Tolkien’s fictional history of the elves and early Middle Earth, and I enjoyed it tremendously. After reading this, I then re-read the volume of essays reviewed here. The second reading was substantially more interesting and enlightening.
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My review follows.
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Part I: The Ring.
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Chapter 1: The Rings of Tolkien and Plato: Lessons in Power, Choice, and Morality. By Eric Katz.
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(I will state from the start that I think it is inexcusable that there is no mention in this entire volume about Lord Acton’s maxim on power: “Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In a story about the One Ring to Rule Them All with all of its seductive and corrosive power, I was very disappointed not to come across what I thought was an important and obvious point. Perhaps my life-long libertarian background made me assume that everyone knew this maxim. Perhaps also the editors did not want contention over politics to darken the mood of the book.)
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In this first essay, Eric Katz reminds us of Plato’s tale of Gyges’ Ring in *The Republic,* which makes its wearer invisible. Gyges finds the ring and uses its cloak of invisibility to seduce the queen and kill the king. Katz writes: “Plato’s question to us is whether or not one should be a moral person even if one has the power to be immoral with impunity. Does immense power destroy the need to be a moral person?” (p.6) He gives a brief outline of Plato’s story and the arguments surrounding it.
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Then Katz discusses how various characters in TLOTR deal with the seductive power of The One Ring, the Ring of Power. Tom Bombadil is not affected at all by the Ring, and he alone can still see Frodo when Frodo is wearing the Ring and is invisible to everyone else. Galadriel refuses to take the Ring. Gandalf will not take it. But these characters are not mortals. Among mortals, Gollum is destroyed by it and obsessed with it. Sam will not keep it. Boromir is seduced by it, thinking that he is strong enough to wield it for good purposes. Aragorn will not take it. (One might also note that, in the book version, Faramir will not take it either.) Also, Bilbo gives it up, although reluctantly. And poor Frodo…. The personal choices of all these characters are examined very well.
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Chapter 2: The Cracks of Doom: The Threat of Emerging Technologies and Tolkien’s Rings of Power. By Theodore Schick.
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The title gives you a good idea of the subject matter, and I will not say much more about it.
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Chapter 3: “My Precious”: Tolkien’s Fetishized Ring. By Alison Milbank.
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Milbank provides a very interesting discussion of TLOTR in light of Freud’s theories on fetishism, in light of feminist theories, and even in light of Marxist alienation theory. She has interesting thoughts on “rings” and “things” in Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythologies, with a great analysis of Northern language (which was Professor Tolkien’s domain). She explores the “wonder” of natural things and our connections to them.
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Part II: The Quest for Happiness. (I liked all of this Part very much.)
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Chapter 4: Tolkien’s Six Keys to Happiness. By Gregory Bassham.
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This is a great chapter. Bassham reminds us that Hobbiton, Rivendell, and Lothlorien (a.k.a. Lorien) are happy places, so he asks us to consider what their inhabitants might teach us about “the secrets of true happiness and fulfillment.” (p.49) He finds six important lessons.
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1. Delight in Simple Things. He notes that hobbits “have no real government.” (I remember reading or hearing somewhere that Tolkien considered himself to be a “Christian anarchist,” if I am not mistaken.) Elves love to sing and to gaze at the stars. Bassham brings in insights from psychological theories and studies. He talks of the simple pleasures recommended by Epicurus. We are also reminded of Thoreau – “the great American apostle of simplicity” – who told his readers to “simplify, simplify.” (p.51)
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2. Make Light of your Troubles. Bassham tells us that this is one of “The Quaker Dozen” rules to live by, and that hobbits have this virtue, as did Marcus Aurelius, the great Stoic philosopher.
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3. Get Personal. High praise is given to Aristotle’s *Nicomachean Ethics* in relation to his discussion of friendship and its role in the fulfilled life. Recent psychological studies are cited to reinforce the point. Bassham writes: “No doubt if some hobbit-Aristotle had written his or her *Nicomachean Ethics,* the goods of friendship and connectedness would have featured at least as prominently as they do in Aristotle’s version.” (p.55)
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4. Cultivate Good Character. In a letter, Tolkien wrote that one aim of writing TLOTR was “the encouragement of good morals.” (p.55; quoted from Tolkien’s *Letters*) (One might add here that this kind of cultivation of good character is also an important theme in Aristotle’s ethics.)
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5. Cherish and Create Beauty. The elves in Tolkien’s books are tall, graceful, wise, and beings of incredible beauty. (For equivalents in Ayn Rand’s works, I think of Ragnar and Kay.) In Tolkien, creativity is also essential to the happy life. (Again, I am reminded of similarities in Rand, who considered productivity to be among the greatest of virtues.)
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6. Rediscover Wonder. Tom Bombadil is in a continual state of rapturous wonder, and it is inexhaustible for him since he is ancient beyond all the memory of any others. Bassham says that the elves have “an almost endless appetite for poetry, song, gazing at the stars, and walking in sunlit forests.” (p.58) They see things with “ever-fresh wonder and delight.” (In this description of the elves, I get a sense of zen.) Bassham quotes Tolkien, from an important separate essay of his entitled “On Fairy-Stories,” where Tolkien talks of “recovery,” a regaining of a sense of freshness, of a “clear view,” “so that things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness and familiarity.” It is a “return and renewal of health.” (p.59) For Tolkien, fairy tales like TLOTR can be healing.
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Chapter 5: The Quests of Sam and Gollum for a Happy Life. By Jorge J.E. Gracia.
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I like this essay even though I only agree partially with the author on a few things. What I do like is his frequent references to Aristotle, e.g., the point that true happiness depends on one’s nature, on the kind of being one is. Gollum has “no resources, no friends.” He has no friends because “he has no love for himself,” and Aristotle is quoted to support this idea. Gracia says, “Gollum lacks this self-love.” (p.70)
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Chapter 6: Farewell to Lorien: The Bounded Joy of Existentialists and Elves. By Eric Bronson.
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I love this essay. (Note: The two philosophers of whom I have read most of their works – and have also read those works with the most care and intensity -- are Rand and Nietzsche; my picture of Nietzsche is close to that given by Bronson here.)
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Grace, beauty, serenity and wisdom are the striking attributes of elves. Elvin songs are joyful, and all the creations of their artistry are of incredible beauty. Galadriel is the Lady of Lorien (a.k.a. Lothlorien). She is more powerful, wiser, older and more experienced than all the other elves of Middle Earth.
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The elves are virtually immortal. They live on for thousands of years. They can die in battle or by a similar mortal injury, but there is some kind of reincarnation involved where they still keep all their memories. Elves can also die of a “world-weariness” that makes life unbearable.
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Galadriel has a hint of sadness, for she remembers the elf rebellion long, long ago in the paradise across the sea to the far West of Middle Earth. She remembers a great Golden Age when elves lived in the West among the god-like Valar, a time when there were no blemishes at all on their happiness and innocence. There was a Fall involved in this earlier elf history, and Galadriel remembers it. It was an act of hubris, disobedience and rebellion that took place when her elf-clan decided to leave the Western paradise and travel to Middle Earth in order to fight evil. (This story you will find in *The Silmarillion.*) Galadriel did not take the treasonous oath that her kinsmen took, but she came with them in exile to Middle Earth, thus she shares somewhat in their rebellion. The memory of this episode taints the joy of elves in Middle Earth with just a hint of sadness. They have an echo of yearning for the West. (p.75)
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Bronson describes how “Galadriel presides over Lorien with songs of joy…. But it is a happiness born of sorrow and dispossession, and that is why Tolkien can be placed in a wider tradition of European philosophers who still affirm life, while bearing witness to the passing shadows.” (p.76)
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Bronson continues: “Philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Jaspers, and Hannah Arendt agree that life carries with it a certain despair, but alongside the suffering stands a spontaneous affirmation of life as it is, though danger lurks behind every tree.” (p.77)
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Nietzsche has hope in dark times; he sees a powerful artist as being the one to give hope. This artist, in Nietzsche’s words, “should see nothing as it is, but fuller, simpler, stronger: to that end, their lives must contain a kind of youth and spring, a kind of habitual intoxication.” (p.77) (I would also ask you to compare this with Rand’s neo-Aristotelian conception of art depicting “life as it might be and ought to be.”)
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Nietzsche also says that world-weariness will set in if we do not learn how to forget certain things. Galadriel, as the elf in Middle Earth who carries the heaviest burden of memory, finds some measure of forgetfulness in that moment when she refuses to possess the One Ring. She remembers who she is, she will “remain Galadriel,” but since she passed this incredible test of will she is unburdened of a heavy weight.
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Part III: Good and Evil in Middle Earth.
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Chapter 7: Uber-hobbits: Tolkien, Nietzsche, and the Will to Power. By Douglas K. Blount.
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This was a painful chapter for me to read and to re-read because Blount and I have very different interpretations of Nietzsche. Blount is a theologian, so he cannot be expected to sympathize with Nietzsche to the extent that I do. Blount seems to be of that school that sees Nietzsche responsible for spawning Hitler, Sauron, and all other manner of evil. I think that Eric Bronson’s interpretation in Chapter 6 is a better one. Blount seems to me to be missing the point of the Will to Power, e.g., Nietzsche would also see scholars and artists (possibly including Tolkien) as exemplars of a Will to Power.
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One of my problems here is that my studies of Nietzsche were 30 years ago, so it is hard to put my finger on exactly where I think Blount is off-base here. Also, Nietzsche was not so much a systematic thinker as he was a poet. He expressed himself in aphorisms and short enthusiastic exclamations, and thus contradictions abound in his writings. (It just occurred to me that both Nietzsche and Tolkien were philologists, immersed in their linguistic specialties and in the wide traditions of wisdom in their respective fields of focus: Tolkien in that of Northern cultures and Nietzsche in those of the Classical world. Contradictions can be found in both.)
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Blount sees in Tolkien’s works a religious conflict, citing supporting evidence from his letters. Nietzsche can always be used to fill in as a great villain, and he often has been so used.
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Chapter 8: Tolkien and the Nature of Evil. By Scott A. Davison.
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Davison asks if Evil is an independent force. Is the world Manichean, where Good and Evil are two equally powerful opposing forces locked in eternal war? Some Tolkien scholars think so according to Davison, but he disagrees.
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He says that evil depends on goodness, taking the “Augustinian” view and citing Tolkien to show convincingly that Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, agreed. Augustine, Davison, and Tolkien see evil as a negation or a destruction of the good. In a letter, Tolkien wrote: “In my story I do not deal with Absolute Evil. I do not think there is such a thing, since that is Zero.” (p.102) (Ayn Rand also wrote of evil as being ultimately impotent and a negation, and she wrote of evil often showing itself as a “hatred of the good for being the good.” Strange bedfellows here, indeed.)
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One of the interesting things about the evil character Sauron in TLOTR is that he thinks everyone will want to possess the Ring and thus its power. He cannot conceive of the possibility that anyone would have the motive of instead renouncing great power and completely *destroying* the Ring. In this aspect, he shows a tremendous *absence,* a great lack of understanding, wisdom and vision.
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Chapter 9: Virtue and Vice in The Lord Of The Rings. By Aeon J. Skoble.
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(Apparently Skoble is a libertarian, but this is the first I have heard of him. His bio paragraph says that he is editor of *Reason Papers.*)
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This is my favorite essay and is in itself worth the price of the whole book. Skoble gives us a robust presentation and defense of Aristotelian “virtue ethics,” arguing for its superiority to either Kantian duty ethics or utilitarian ethics by using TLOTR characters as examples.
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I think that this would be a very good intro to Aristotelian ethics for one who was totally new to it. It is a great 10-page intro to important aspects of it. (Many Randians do not seem to realize how close Aristotle’s ethics are to Ayn Rand’s in many ways.)
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Skoble writes that Aristotle has a *developmental* focus on ethics: “what we need to do is *become* virtuous.” Certain “habits of thought and action tend to move our characters … towards states Aristotle calls virtues….” Of course, other habits of thought or action tend to move us towards vices. In his section titled “Developing Good Character,” Skoble writes: “For Aristotle, moral virtues are states of character one develops which, as they become more integral to one’s being, help one to lead a happier, more fulfilled life.” (p.111)
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How do we decide, in a particular situation, how we should act? Part of a virtue-ethics is the idea that a person who has “cultivated good character” will have developed a kind of “moral wisdom” – what Aristotle called “practical reason.” (p.111) Practical reason must make judgments in “reference to a predominant goal.” … “On the Aristotelian view, there is such an overall predominant value: life, or more specifically, a flourishing or good life.” (p.112) (Those familiar with Rand’s ethics will see a distinct resemblance here.)
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Aristotle stresses that one must learn to acquire a virtuous character by performing virtuous acts. (p.112) It must be developed and be made habitual. A helpful part of this process of self-development is finding and emulating the right role models. (p.113) (This reminds me of the Buddha’s advice to choose to hang around “Noble Companions” and to avoid the influence of ignoble ones.) Skoble then looks at several characters in TLOTR to illustrate both virtuous and vicious character traits in light of virtue ethics. Aragorn and Boromir are compared; Skoble points out that Boromir, although basically decent, has a flaw of intellectual stubbornness of the kind that Aristotle had criticized by quoting Hesiod: “He who grasps everything himself is best of all; he is noble also who listens to one who has spoken well; but he who neither grasps it himself nor takes to heart what he hears from another is a useless man” (Hesiod, *Works and Days,* quoted in Aristotle, *Nicomachean Ethics,* 1095b10). Skoble’s whole discussion of Boromir as a tragic figure is very interesting. (p.116)
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In the section “Virtue Ethics in Perspective,” Skoble makes some final comparisons between virtue ethics and both Kantian and utilitarian ethics. (pp.117-119)
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(If you have not read it yet, I highly recommend Aristotle’s *Nicomachean Ethics.* Buy a small paperback copy and carry it around for those times when you can browse it. Browsing is easy because most versions have a good Topical Table of Contents, allowing you to look up subjects according to what interests you might have at the moment. After some time of familiarization, read it straight through. It is absolutely a classic in ethical thinking.)
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Part IV: Time and Mortality.
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Chapter 10: Choosing to Die: The Gift of Mortality in Middle Earth. By Bill Davis.
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I found this to be a very interesting essay, even though I do not agree completely with Davis in the end. He may be much closer to Tolkien’s view than I am.
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Davis describes many of the most common ideas about death in TLOTR very well. Elves are immortal, for as long as the world endures. In the viewpoint of the elves, the death of a human means that human’s complete annihilation, and the elves actually call this “the gift” given to men. If an elf dies in battle, he is reincarnated into a similar body with memory intact. Elves never really die, and men consider this to be a “gift” given to the elves. Each envy the other.
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Davis Discusses “Death in Middle Earth” (pp.124-7) and then gives us a good treatment of “Death on Planet Earth.” In this last section, he discusses Socrates’ view of death as well as that of the Epicurean philosopher Lucretius in his *On the Nature of Things.* Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus are also mentioned. (pp.127-9)
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In the section “Immortality in Middle Earth,” Davis covers Tolkien’s references to elvin reincarnation, and he also suggests that elves find immortality to be *boring.* (pp.129-130) In connection with this last thought, the section “Immortality on Planet Earth” brings up ideas about immortality from Eastern and Western religions and philosophies. The eternal punishment-task outlined in Camus’ *Myth of Sisyphus* is mentioned, along with Wowbanger the Infinitely Prolonged in *Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.* Wowbanger is immortal and is so horribly bored by this condition that he institutes the personal project of insulting every singe person in the universe, one at a time, in alphabetical order. When he shows up, he ascertains that you are the right person on his list, then he rudely insults you, checks off your name on his vast list, and then sets off to find the next name. (pp.130-133)
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The most relevant case in the actual TLOTR story is Arwen’s love for Aragorn, who is a mortal man. Arwen is a rare case of being half-elvin, from one elf parent and one human parent, and she must ultimately choose either to be immortal as an elf and forever leave Middle Earth, going over the sea to the ancestral elvin realm in the West, or she can give up her immortality so she can live one mortal life in Middle Earth with Aragorn. This is high romance. In *The Silmarillion* there is the similar story of the love between Beren and Luthien.
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Chapter 11: Tolkien, Modernism, and the Importance of Tradition. By Joe Kraus.
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Kraus writes that “the heroes of TLOTR often rescue themselves because they remember something important that their enemies have forgotten.” … “They have studied history, lore, tactics, languages, and geography, and they know as much as they can about whatever it is that they are attempting. They have their trusty swords and their quick wits with them all of the time, but they have also done their homework. Thus, Tolkien seems to tell us, knowledge is a crucial part of what it takes to be a hero.” (p.137-8)
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Kraus argues that one part of Tolkien’s vision in writing TLOTR was “to imagine a world where scholarship and respect for tradition provide real and tangible power.” Tolkien, as a professor, studied and taught ancient Northern European languages and “was committed to the values of the humanities.” (p.138) To Tolkien, “being heroic ties into being scholarly.”
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Kraus writes that Tolkien saw immense despair in a modern world that has rejected tradition. This despair is shown in TLOTR by Denethor and Saruman, who both were great scholars but have now disregarded their learned wisdom, followed false new hopes or visions, and have succumbed to despair. (pp.141-3)
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(Is Kraus arguing for conservativism? Or is he arguing for perennialism? A perennialist is one who values certain particular traditions chiefly because he sees true perennial value in them rather than just valuing them because they are old and traditional. I prefer being a “perennialist,” because I see value being timeless as value, whether it be old or radically brand new.)
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Chapter 12: Tolkien’s Green Time: Environmental Themes in TLOTR. By Andrew Light.
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By “green time,” Light means a perspective on the natural world that involves a tremendously long view of time, an evolutionary time-scale or longer. The ents and Tom Bombadil represent this perspective in the story. Light talks about the niches that the various free peoples of Middle Earth love the most: elves love the forests, dwarves love the mountains and the underground places, and hobbits love The Shire.
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Elves are immortal, thus they have the long view. Even such an ancient one as Treebeard says that “The Elves cured us [the ents] of dumbness.” Davis suggests that this may mean the elves nurtured “a capacity of reason and eventually of speech” in the ents. (p.154) In a letter, Tolkien wrote: “The elves represent … the artistic, aesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the Humane Nature raised to a higher level than is actually seen in Men.” (p.155)
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Part V: Ends and Endings.
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Chapter 13: Providence and the Dramatic Unity of TLOTR. By Thomas Hibbs.
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Hibbs argues, with good textual evidence, that in his stories “Tolkien manages to suggest the working of a higher, benevolent power, a providential orchestration of events.” (p.167) Hibbs launches into a discussion of the traditional philosophical problems with the idea of providence. Then he proceeds to argue that “Tolkien offers a dramatic demonstration of the reality of human freedom and action and of the way patience and compassion is used to overcome evil.” (p.168) The role of Gollum is considered as an instrument of providence. Also, the case of Boromir and his changes at his end are examined.
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Hibbs writes that “Gandalf explains that while we can’t always control life’s storms, we can control how we react to the inclement weather.” (p.172) (Said like an ancient Greek Stoic.)
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Kant’s (Enlightenment) view of nature being “disenchanted” is contrasted with Tolkien’s fictional view, where “the entirety of nature is not just enchanted but is permeated with reason and moral sense.” (pp.172-3) Hibbs then dismisses any reading of a Manichean vision in Tolkien, instead going with Augustine: evil has no real existence because it is merely an absence, a privation of the good. (p.174)
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Chapter 14: Talking Trees and Walking Mountains: Buddhist and Taoist Themes in TLOTR. By Jennifer L. McMahon and B. Steve Csaki.
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I had higher hopes for this essay, but it is still okay. The authors seek to “address the themes of sentience in non-human entities, man’s relationship with nature, the importance of the master and student relationship, and the balance between good and evil.” (p.179) (Yet none of these themes have had much relevance to me in my four decades of interest in and study of Eastern philosophies and religions, except for my “relationship with nature,” which is that I simply consider myself at home there.)
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The ents obviously cover the sentience part. As for sentience in non-human things in Eastern thought, the authors remind us: “This is particularly true of Japanese Buddhist sects which have incorporated some of the animistic elements of Shinto.” (p.181) (The Shinto belief that certain beautiful locales in nature – e.g., a rocky place, a streambed, a hilltop, a tree or a shoreline – may have their own spirit, or “kami,” has always had an aesthetic resonance with me in my enjoyment of nature, but I never interpret this as a possession of “sentience” on the part of the place or things.)
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As for master and student, and the mentoring process, they point out that sometimes the right master may seem to be unlikely. E.g., Zen master Dogen left Japan to find instruction in China, and he learned profound lessons from a Ch’an monastery’s cook whom he ran into on the docks. In TLOTR, Sam is sometimes the wise master that Frodo needs. Also, Gandalf, Elrond and Aragorn share their vast wisdom with the hobbits. (pp.185-188)
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As for a balance between good and evil, the Taoist yin/yang balance is discussed.
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Chapter 15: Sam and Frodo’s Excellent Adventure: Tolkien’s Journey Motif. By J. Lenore Wright.
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“Not all those who wander are lost.” (p.195) (A quote from Bilbo Baggins, my all-time favorite character in Tolkien. I always saw him as a fellow wanderer.)
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Wright talks about journey motifs: the journey out of the Cave into the light in Plato’s *Republic.* Augustine’s *Confessions,* depicting his spiritual journey from pagan Rome to Manichaeism to Academic Skepticism and finally to St. Ambrose. (pp.194-5)
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She reminds us that Descartes’ scientific journeys of discovery led him to turn inward, in his words, “to undertake studies within my self too and to use all the powers of my mind in choosing the paths I should follow.” Frodo and his fellow hobbits transform themselves throughout their journey, and they realize Nietzsche’s advice to “become who you are.” (pp.196-7)
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In their personal transformations, Gandalf, Aragorn and Sam all have some kind of name changes, which is an important journey motif, as in the great Chinese tale, *Journey to the West,* where “Monkey” eventually becomes known as a “Buddha Victorious in Strife.” (p.198)
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Sam and Frodo are Nietzschean “Yea-sayers,” who welcome life despite its burdens. But Smeagol and Saruman are “Nay-sayers,” becoming “inauthentic” in Heidegger’s terms. (p.199) Sam and Frodo are also pilgrims on a “Quest,” and they need guides such as Gandalf and Aragorn. Frodo, much like Dante moving with the guidance of Virgil through Hell, stumbles, faints and struggles against the spiritual weight of the Ring. (p.201)
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Chapter 16: Happy Endings and Religious Hope: TLOTR as an Epic Fairy Tale. By John J. Davenport. (Final essay in this collection, and one of my favorites.)
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This is a great essay, the kind that opens new avenues of thought. The title sums it up pretty well. It took me about three readings of this essay before I could really integrate it. Although I have a lot of major religious/philosophical differences with Tolkien (and Davenport), I think Davenport’s essay is a very important one when thinking about Tolkien’s works.
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Davenport starts by saying that some readers see TLOTR as an entertaining adventure, while others see it as a Christian allegory. He says: “I will argue instead that Tolkien conceived his masterpiece as an epic fairy tale with a kind of religious significance.” … “I will look at Tolkien’s theory of the fairy tale and his Arthurian romance model for the happy ending in TLOTR.” (p.204) I found what follows to be very interesting.
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Noting the long-standing critical debate about whether or not TLOTR is a fundamentally religious work, Davenport points out that Tolkien’s work is closer to Northern European mythology in many ways.
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In a footnote, Davenport writes: “…I would argue that Tolkien’s work is also deeply inspired by the Arthurian legends and the larger cycle of British national mythology. The very first story Tolkien wrote about his fictional world, ‘The Fall of Gondolin’, has clear links to the Fall of King Arthur.” (p.205)
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Davenport draws heavily upon Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” (which was also cited earlier in this volume in Ch. 3 by Milbank and in Ch. 4 by Bassham) and claims it is an essential essay for understanding Tolkien. Rather than being stories for children, in Davenport’s words, genuine fairy-stories for Tolkien are a form of “serious literary art in which nature appears as a ‘Perilous Realm’, the world of ‘Faerie’.” (p.207-8)
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Tolkien always insisted in his letters on the importance of his theory of fairy stories to his work. Davenport mentions other good examples of this type of fairy story: the original *Perseus and the Gorgon* and *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.* (p.208)
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Tolkien coins a term, “eucatastrophe,” for the kind of happy ending in a fairy story that appears right in the middle of apparent catastrophe, a kind of joyous “turn” in the story. Davenport writes: “[Tolkien] conceives tragedy as the true form and highest function of drama, and eucatastrophe as the true form and highest function of fairy-tale.” (p.210)
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Talking about the New Testament stories of the Resurrection, Tolkien says, “The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories.” (p.211) Davenport says that the Gospels have a eucatastrophe – i.e., the Resurrection -- that holds out more direct hope than the more indirect ones of most fairy-stories.
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Davenport very convincingly argues that the medieval tale of *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight* is one that “…Tolkien studied closely and used in creating Frodo.” (p.211) Later Davenport writes that “…Gawain is Tolkien’s primary model for Frodo.” (p.212)
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The Green Knight is a variant of the “green man” nature spirit in ancient Celtic myth. (p.211) He is immensely powerful, and it looks certain that Gawain will die by his blade. But a eucatastrophe occurs, a “turn” in the story that saves Gawain from death, although Gawain receives a scar from the contest that he will carry for the rest of his life. (p.212)
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Davenport reminds us that Frodo, too, will receive a scar, the loss of a finger, during the eucatastrophe that occurs at a climactic moment in his story, saving him from near certain doom. (p.212) In Tolkien’s *The Silmarillion,* Beren’s quest for a Silmaril results in a similar scarring, the loss of a hand. (p.214) (I will also point out that Robert Bly’s book, *Iron John,* investigates fairy tales and emphasizes both the fictional and existential importance of wounds and scars in the journey to true manhood.)
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Davenport writes: “Tolkien’s primary goal in TLOTR was to create a fantasy for our time with the same eucatastrophic power that Gawain’s fantastic tale had for fifteenth-century Britons, and this is what gives his trilogy its encompassing religious mood.” (p.213)
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Davenport writes that, while the unfinished *The Silmarillion* was designed to be an epic, “…TLOTR is meant to *combine* the epic quest narrative with the eucatastrophic (or indirectly eschatological) significance of the true faerie tale.” (p.215) This combination had never been done before in British or Germanic mythology.
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Davenport then catalogs many of the eucatastrophes within TLOTR, ending with Aragorn’s act of “turning”: turning around to find the sapling of Nimloth, the White Tree of Numenor, that itself has a pedigree going all the way back to the earliest of days. (p.218)
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[End of my reviews of this volume’s essays.]
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After-notes by reviewer:
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I had been wondering for many decades and never really understood why it was that Tolkien could be so beloved by many I knew who are Christians. It seemed exceedingly odd and inappropriate to me, because in my experience Tolkien was a terrific hit mainly among neo-pagans I knew or knew of, many of whom are certain that Tolkien was one of the major influences in the 20th century revival of Paganism in the West. But I think many of the essays in this volume help explain the situation to me in some degree. TLOTR is a pre-Christian tale modeled on the very ancient pagan North, but some of Tolkien’s Roman Catholicism still does come through (including the Aristotelianism that Aquinas had synthesized into the Catholic tradition).
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One of my main disappointments with TLOTR has always been the episode where I felt that Frodo “dropped the ball” at a critical moment, thus he fell a notch or two in his heroic stature in my mind. The tiny hobbit, who heroically declared “I will take the Ring” on the Quest, later fell somewhat short of my expectations of a true hero. But Davenport’s discussion of Tolkien’s eucatastrophic vision of the fairy tale explains this all very well regarding the aesthetic purpose of the entire story. Tolkien – although being a 20th century writer -- is not really in the Romantic traditions of heroism that I so love and prefer, as were developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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Yet I love *The Hobbit,* *TLOTR* and *The Silmarillion.* I think I like them so much because of their sense of a history, as well as the poetry in them, and the nature-aesthetic that Tolkien makes so real. There are also heroes aplenty, in the roles of Sam, Strider, and many, many more. It really is an epic fairy tale.
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-Zenwind.

Ice Skating in the Swamp

2009-01-08T19:07:00.001+07:00

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I used to ice skate a lot in my younger days, when winters were so cold. But the greatest experiences I ever had skating were a series of solo explorations on skates into the big swamp just east of Sugar Grove’s borough limits during one of those frigid winters in the early 1960s. I was anywhere from 10 to 13 years old at that time, and I saw things in that winter swampland I’ve never seen before or since.
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I had tried to explore this swamp in earlier years in the summertime, and it was almost impenetrable because of both the dense thickets of brush and also the deep, sticky mud in the meandering streams and pools that would go over your knees and stop you in your tracks. My friends and I could only get into the outer margins of the swamp during the warmer parts of the year, never into its heart. But in the cold of winter the watercourses actually became my trails.
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I had just received a pair of boy’s figure skates for Christmas, as I had out-grown my old hockey skates. Christmas afternoon I went back to the little stream going through our north pasture, Brand’s Creek, and tried them out. The frozen stream surface was rough from wind ripples on the water freezing into ridges, and the little gradual waterfalls now became horrendously fast downgrades that made me rocket down along the stream’s eastward course. It was almost like skiing on ice. After falling hard many times and finally hitting a couple of barbed wire fences that separated pastures and crossed over the creek, I gave up for the day, skated back upstream against the wind and went home to lick my wounds.
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But before returning to the farmhouse I glanced at Brand’s Creek’s course as it went eastward far beyond my day’s short excursion and on into the great swamp. I knew that our creek met the bigger Stillwater Creek somewhere after going into that swamp.
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There was a challenge taunting me here. My father had always told of Doc Grant once skating down the frozen Stillwater Creek from downtown Sugar Grove to some point far downstream. I am not sure how far Doc skated, but skating downstream would take you eventually through Busti, NY and end when the Stillwater meets the Conewango at Frewsburg. I was not a good enough skater to go any of those long miles, but I thought that I would be able at least to skate Brand’s Creek to the swamp on my next try.
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On another day that week I skated Brand’s Creek from our pasture through Carl Allen’s north pasture and Francis Thompson’s north pasture all the way east to the swamp. I didn’t hit a single fence, because instead I just hit the deck and slid under them.
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One odd hazard I faced was double ice layers, caused by initial freezing of a higher water level followed by a drop in water level and then the hard solid freeze of a lower level. I would suddenly, without warning, break through an upper ice level – which was terrifying – and be stopped by the lower, solid level. Once I slid down between the two layers, which were not much more than a foot apart, and I stopped with ice above me and below me. I felt stuck, I could hear the water gurgling below me, and I was in panic, really scared. I could not elbow or claw my way back upstream to exit the hole I had fallen through. At last I discovered the virtues of the front teeth of figure skates, and I used them for grip to struggle out.
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Continuing downstream, skating down even the gradual incline of such a small stream was frighteningly fast, especially with the wind at my back pushing me on. I fell many times, but I eventually reached the point where the creek enters the swamp. I had to give up and return home because of the extreme wind-chill and because of my numb fingers and toes. The return against grade and wind seemed endless.
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After returning home and thawing out, I announced my plans for skating into the unknown of the swamp, and my mother was positively horrified with worry, especially because I always went alone. But my father reasoned: “Ice is usually solid if you have had three or four sub-zero [Fahrenheit] nights in a row.” That was good enough for me. We had had prolonged sub-zero weather for almost a week, with temperatures minus-10, minus-15 or lower most every night. So I was determined to try it. The things I put my dear mother through.
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New Years Day was minus-10 at 9:00 AM with a stiff wind when I again went down Brand’s Creek to the swamp. When I crossed into the swamp on skates I got tangled trying to get through a barbed wire fence and I kept tripping in the underbrush, tree roots and grasses when the front teeth on my figure skates snagged. I finally found a small stream in the swamp and started exploring.
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The ice was immediately smoother, more level and more forgiving, because the trees and brush had shielded it from the wind. It was like glass with only a dusting of snow. This was the first time I had ever skated on smooth ice, and I was ecstatic. The little hummocks of grass and sod that would form a sort of stepping stone of dryness in summer travel were now obstacles that would trip me. I had a little open U-shaped area in the fork of this small stream were I could skate fast, and any falls would not be too rough. I skated back and forth on this area, faster each time. I remember once falling at great speed and sliding face-first across a broad area into the frozen grassy stream bank, and I was laughing so hard I could hardly stand back up.
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Later, as I was skating as fast as I could along my little course, a rabbit suddenly jumped out of hiding from somewhere among the grass hummocks, and he ran away from me skittering and slipping on the ice. He was having a hard time getting any traction, but I was already moving fast in his direction so that I was actually gaining on him. Now I feel bad for chasing the poor little guy, who was probably scared silly. I don’t know what I would have done if I had caught up to him, but the situation resolved itself quickly. The previously open stream was now turning into less and less ice with more and more grass hummocks and trees. As the rabbit jumped unto these little islands of dry land he gained traction and momentum, while I was dodging them, trying to keep my skates on ice and trying not to trip. The rabbit got further ahead, I finally tripped on the grass and crashed into a tree root, and the rabbit disappeared into the woods. Good for him.
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I visited the swamp again the next weekend. Again, it was sub-zero cold with even more extreme wind-chill. I explored further beyond my last point and found traces of a little tributary creek coming in from slightly upstream. I wound my way through sketchy ice patches in a mostly grassy stream-course, often having to walk over uneven hummocky dry ground, which made my ankles ache. I was ready to give up and go back until I saw a clearing up ahead and made my way to it.
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Entering this clearing was one of the most unique memories I have of my youth. Ahead of me was a beaver dam. It was low and broad, maybe 30 yards across. The area of ice dammed up in the pond above it was about the size of half of a football field. On one part of the pond was a beaver lodge. The dam of sticks was almost 3 feet higher than my stream level, and I found that I could use my figure skates’ front teeth to tip-toe up the frozen-solid weave of sticks making up the dam.
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Reaching up to this level of the broad frozen beaver pond, I was skating on the biggest area of ice I’d ever been on before. But I was feeling very cold now. This clearing in the swamp’s usual forest cover of trees and brush allowed the wind to reach me, and I was shivering and exhausted. I skated over to the beaver lodge, but all was still and silent there.
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Determined to explore a bit more, I skated in the upstream direction as the pond thinned out into little streams. Then I came upon another upper beaver dam. The dam was smaller, only about a foot and a half high. I front-pointed up it with my skates’ teeth and skated around a bit on this smaller area, but it was even more exposed to the wind. I now think that I was at that time suffering hypothermia from the wind-chill and my mind was getting sluggish.
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I don’t remember much about skating back except that I took a bad fall trying to go down the upper dam. By the time I got back to the lower dam I figured out that I must turn around and go down backwards while facing the dam, kicking my skates’ teeth into the wood of the dam much like modern ice climbers do. I do remember a painful return trip after leaving the forested swamp and going into the open fields again while skating back up Brand’s Creek, upstream and against the wind. I was frozen, with aching fingers and toes, and delirious. The open fire in the fireplace at home never seemed so comforting.
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I never made it back to the swamp that winter, because we had a January thaw and heavy rains that ruined the ice.
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The swamp was usually a remote, unknown and protected world, hard to reach. But the miracle of that winter’s hard-freeze allowed me a brief moment to peek into its inner mysteries. Truly a winter wonderland.
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-Zenwind.

Contents of Climbing Log

2008-05-18T15:40:00.000+07:00

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Here are the names of entries in my Climbing Log in order of their arrangement from the top to bottom. To access all of these entries on one page, click on the “a Climbing Log” label either below this entry or on the "Index" list of labels to the right.
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Silver Moonlight
The Banshee Cry
Ancient Boundaries
High Slab Climbing
Nietzsche quote: On the Mountains of Truth
Photo: Zenwind high at Seneca Rocks
Gothics North Face
Minus 40 Degrees
The Coldest of Ice Climbs
Chouinard’s Gully
Roped Solo Technique (old style)
Encounter on a Rocky Ridge
The Frostbite Trip
Breath Control and Extreme Climbing
My Cousin
Purpose of my Climbing Log
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-Zenwind.

Silver Moonlight

2008-05-18T15:36:00.000+07:00

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(Part 1 of a 4-part saga about my September 1981 Adirondack trip. Part 2: “The Banshee Cry.” Part 3: “Ancient Boundaries.” Part 4: “High Slab Climbing.”)
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This was one of the most beautiful – as well as unusual -- nights I have ever spent in the mountains. It was the September Full Moon of 1981, and my objectives on this mini-expedition were Mt. Algonquin via traversing trail and Mt. Colden via its north face slab climb.
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It was to be a lightweight and fast trip with minimal gear. Instead of a sleeping bag I used a half-bag with a parka, both out of good synthetics. No tent, just a 1-pound Gore-Tex bivy-sack, which was really only a water/wind-resistant mummy-shaped sleeping bag cover.
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Starting from the Adirondack (ADK) Lodge Trailhead, I got a very late afternoon start straight up from Heart Lake to the summit of Mt. Algonquin, the second highest mountaintop in the ADK range, and the highest peak of the triple-peaked mountain mass that is also called MacIntyre Mountain.
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Before reaching the Algonquin summit, I stopped to examine the nearby off-trail site where a B-52 had crashed in bad weather into the top of the mountain decades before. An engine-mount is still embedded in a crack.
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On Algonquin’s summit I enjoyed a great view in all directions. It was a beautiful end to a beautiful autumn evening, but the air was fast becoming chilly and the sun was low. On the general summit area I found the only spot suitable for a bivouac, which was a small flat ledge about 40 yards from the summit, to its SE.
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I took off my boots and cooked supper while sitting in my half-bag and parka. As I put my cooking gear away, I watched the sun go down on my right and the full moon rise on my left over Vermont. My feet were pointed south toward Avalanche Pass below and its beautiful lakes: Avalanche Lake and Lake Colden. My next objective, Mt. Colden’s north face, looked very steep and very big. Exhausted from a 10-hour drive and the hike up to the summit, I fell right asleep.
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I woke up at midnight in a beautiful world of silver. There was no color, only shades of silver. I was disoriented at first, not least because the entire world seemed to be below me. The moon was centered in the south, looking me right in the face and reflecting brightly off the lakes below my feet. The whole universe was silver, the moon and sky above me, the mountains and valleys all around me and below me, and especially those lakes and streams below to the south. I saw a small glimmer in the distance that I finally identified as a silver waterfall on some mountainside far below.
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The night was still and peaceful, and this was among the finest moments I have ever had in the mountains or anywhere else. In times like this, my heart aches because I want so much to show such beautiful mountain sights to family and friends. But they never choose to come this way, to make the effort of the ascent. So such beautiful experiences seem to be both the blessing and curse of a solo rambler like me.
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I enjoyed the silver moonlit world around me and below me for as long as possible, trying to keep my eyes open and to sit up. But eventually I fell back asleep.
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(This saga is continued in Parts 2, 3 and 4.)
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-Zenwind.

The Banshee Cry

2008-05-18T15:35:00.000+07:00

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(Part 2 of a 4-part saga about my September 1981 ADK trip.)
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While bivouacking close to the summit of Mt. Algonquin, and after falling asleep to a beautifully calm midnight view of clear silver moonlight, I woke up at 3am to an entirely different world, one of chaos, loud blasting wind, and shards of torn cloud pin-wheeling past my face. The moon, now in the SW, was barely visible behind racing cloud formations.
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Then I started to hear an absolutely unearthly sound, and it got steadily louder. It was unbelievably frightening, and I do not frighten that easily. It gives me chills as I recount it now, decades later. It was an earsplitting sound like a ghastly scream. All I could think of was legends of the “Cry of the Banshee.” It was blood-curdling and insanely loud. I was terrified. I could not explain it. In all my experiences, no natural forces could ever produce a sound like this.
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I am not a superstitious person, but my emotional experience at that moment was as if there were, in actual reality, a raging supernatural demon out there, the kind of demon-greeter one could imagine meeting at the very Gates of Hell. I consulted my rational mind and easily agreed with it that only natural forces operate in the universe. But what the hell was making this ghastly noise? I could not even begin to rationally explain it.
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Thinking that I absolutely must explore this weird phenomenon, I got out of my bivy gear and put my boots on. The screaming sound was coming from the summit, 40 yards away and a bit higher up to the NW of my bivy site. I put rocks on my gear so it would not blow away, and I started climbing toward the summit and the noise’s source. All the hairs on my body were actually bristling with fear, but I just had to check it out.
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Moving toward the summit rocks, a gust of wind blew me off my feet. I got up and moved onward, crouching low, and the terrifying screaming sound just got louder. The final few yards were the scariest, as I was about to peek over the summit rocks.
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Finally reaching the summit on all fours, facing into the full force of the wind, I looked over the far side of the mountain. Between me and the valley of the Olympic town of Lake Placid to the NW was a huge storm cloud. Its base was far below me and its top was far higher than the entire mountain range. And it was advancing straight toward me – fast.
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“Oh,” I thought, “it’s just a storm.” (Albeit a really horrendous and scary storm.) That completely explained the unearthly screaming sound. It had simply been powerful wind racing over the summit rocks upwind of me. All clarified, I quickly headed back to my bivy site. This was a hell of a storm.
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Back to my bivouac, I got out the only lightweight shelter I had packed, a one-pound Gore-Tex bivy sack. I got it over my half-bag and parka, but before zipping it closed I put all my other gear, including boots, into my pack and put heavy rocks on top of it all so it would not blow away. Zipped inside my bivy, I waited it out.
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Wind gusts were so sudden and violent that they actually rocked me with each gust as I lay there, almost rolling me off the ledge -- and I was on the lee side of the summit. I could not sleep, and the storm just got worse, accompanied by more loud ghostly sounds.
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Finally morning light came as the storm blew over. I felt quite beat. After all, I did not sleep much, and the fear in the night had exhausted me. It had become very cold and wet, and I knew I would not try climbing the smooth friction slab of Mt. Colden today in wet conditions, so I declared this a rest day.
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(This saga continues in Parts 3 and 4.)
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-Zenwind.

Ancient Boundaries

2008-05-18T15:34:00.000+07:00

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(Part 3 of the 4-part September 1981 Adirondack saga.)
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While still on Algonquin’s summit after the night of “Silver Moonlight” and “The Banshee Cry,” I took a side trip to hike over to the other, slightly lower, summits of this MacIntyre Mountain massif. These are Boundary Peak and Iroquois Peak, which few people visit although they are only several hundred yards off the main trail. This is a highly recommended detour.
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The Native Indian tribes of the Algonquin to the north and the Iroquois to the south were said to have had boundaries between them through the center of the Adirondack Mountains, on a SW-NE line, and this boundary went right over the top of MacIntyre Mountain. The boundaries of their hunting grounds were defined by the watersheds.
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You cannot really appreciate this from Algonquin peak alone; you must walk over Boundary Peak to Iroquois Peak (where you get a unique view of Wallface Mountain’s sheer east face and the wilds of Indian Pass in between). Then walk back to Boundary Peak and stand and look around.
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Looking SW you see the line of great boundary passes dividing the watersheds of the range between Algonquin tribes to the north and Iroquois tribes to the south, e.g., Indian Pass. Then turn to look NE and you see the line of boundary passes continue to trend off in that direction, e.g., Hunter Pass. I know of no spot in the range where you can see the divide so well as at Boundary Peak, and that is the origin of its name.
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The detour completed, I packed up and stumbled down the south trail off Algonquin toward Avalanche Pass and the lakes area. I studied Mt. Colden’s north face, my next objective, which loomed across the valley, as I descended. I bivouacked early in the Pass, looking for an early start the next morning.
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(This saga continues in Part 4.)
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-Zenwind.

High Slab Climbing

2008-05-18T15:31:00.000+07:00

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(Part 4, final part of the September 1981 ADK saga.)
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The next day I climbed Mt. Colden’s north face as an easy free-solo rock climb (or “slide”/”slab” climb) in hiking boots with no rock gear. It is not too technical, but is very high, the entire face being somewhere under 1,000 feet high.
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You start by going up a waterfall gully (geologically called a trapdike) on the left of the face, which is an easy rock climb if not too wet. At a certain point, you escape the gully to the right when you can climb out onto the slab. This slab is a long, huge, moderately steep and very exposed friction climb to the top, with no real foot- or hand-holds, and very little places to put climbing anchors even if you had them. You just rely on balance and friction techniques – and dry rock.
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(This Colden’s north face is also one of the classic Adirondack ice and snow climbs in winter, if the snow on the slab is consolidated enough. One climbs up the now-frozen waterfall/trapdike and then out onto the moderate snow climb of the slab. I have never got the chance to do this as an ice climb, as it was never in good condition when I was ready for it, but it is still at the top of my list.)
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The rock slab was not too bad for me. The exposure was not freaking me out as I moved up, as I had been climbing a lot of rock that year. I was hundreds of feet up, at the top of the slab section and very close to the summit, when I came to the little 12-foot wall at the top of the slab that blocked the way to the wooded summit.
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But there was a thin layer of morning ice glaze on this wall, right where I did not need it, and I was a bit concerned about what to do. Down-climbing was out of the question, and there did not appear to be any escape off the slab to the right or left. I could not even rest comfortably on the slanting slab, and my legs were starting to cramp up badly. I consulted the climbing guidebook and realized that I had no choice but to go up the icy wall.
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It was a bit dicey. If you fall off this short wall, you land on the upper reaches of the steeply-sloping slab with nothing to grab, so you are looking at a long, sliding, bouncing and accelerating skid of hundreds and hundreds of feet down into the trees below. Not pretty. My concern was getting close to real fear as my leg muscles started to cramp into knots.
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I actually remember very little about the specific climbing moves that got me up that last short iced wall. All I remember about that spot was the battle to control my fear and to think, to look carefully at the ground I must climb, and to act decisively. But I somehow did gain the summit of Colden, which is somewhat disappointing as a summit because it has trees that obscure any 360-degree view.
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I descended the west ridge, picked up my gear and very humbly limped down the valley trails back to the roadhead.
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-Zenwind.

Striving On

2008-03-11T10:03:00.003+07:00

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Trying to become a Buddha is easy,
But ending delusions is hard.
So many frosted moonlit nights
I’ve sat and felt the cold before dawn.
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~Shih-wu~ (14th cen. Chinese Ch'an/Zen mountain hermit)

Impermanent as a Bubble

2008-03-11T09:57:00.002+07:00

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This body's existence is like a bubble's.
May as well accept what happens.
Events and hopes seldom agree.
But he who can step back doesn't worry.
We blossom and fade like flowers;
Gather and part like clouds.
Worldly thoughts I forgot long ago,
Relaxing all day on a peak.
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~Shih-wu~ (14th cen. Chinese Ch'an/Zen mountain hermit)

On the Mountains of Truth

2008-02-23T17:11:00.002+07:00

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“On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.”
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-- Nietzsche.

Cold Mountain Poem #12

2008-02-11T13:03:00.000+07:00

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In my first thirty years of life
I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.
Walked by rivers through deep green grass
Entered cities of boiling red dust.
Tried drugs, but couldn't make Immortal;
Read books and wrote poems on history.
Today I'm back at Cold Mountain:
I'll sleep by the creek and purify my ears.
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~Han Shan (8th century Chinese Ch'an/Zen/Taoist mountain lunatic/poet)

The Men That Don’t Fit In

2008-02-11T10:48:00.000+07:00

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“There’s a race of men who don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
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“They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsies' blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.”
...
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~Robert Service.

Rest

2008-02-11T10:16:00.000+07:00

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“Over all the mountains is peace….
Only wait – soon
You too shall find rest.”
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~J.W. von Goethe.

Symphony of Triumph

2008-02-11T10:07:00.000+07:00

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“It was a symphony of triumph.
The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.”
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~Ayn Rand~ ("Atlas Shrugged")

Allegheny Mountain Poem #1

2008-02-11T09:52:00.001+07:00

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“On high hilltop.
Storm roaring through the trees.
Snuggled next to a big boulder,
I am warm and dry.
Ha! Ha!”
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~Ross Barlow. (1975)

Invictus

2008-02-11T09:47:00.000+07:00

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Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
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In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
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Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
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It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
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~ by William Ernest Henley (1875).

Zenwind high at Seneca Rocks

2007-06-11T16:32:00.000+07:00

The Lives of Others (2006)

2007-05-30T11:05:00.000+07:00

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An unforgettable movie. It is in the German language with English subtitles [Das Leben der Anderen (2006)]. It won the recent Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, which it richly deserved.
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It portrays a Stasi (secret police) officer of communist East Germany before the end of the Cold War who watches his system work its corruption and ruin on the lives of others, on real people. We see the lives of intellectuals and artists who are trapped within the insanity of a society of “actually-existing socialism.” Can good men preserve any traces of their goodness in such a brutal world?
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Socialism sucks. This truth had to be told, and you will not see Hollywood doing it. I found myself going through many emotions while seeing it. I was outrageously angry at the ruling elite’s contempt for human liberty, and I will refrain from telling you the raw expletives that leapt to my mind to describe these monsters. I was fascinated by the scientific discipline and methodical routines used for the perverse purposes of totalitarian control. I laughed at some of the sheer absurdities of a rigid socialist system. I shook my head in wonder at the fine acting and filmmaking. And I ended up weeping in release as this great sad, dark, but redeeming story wrapped up. Wow.
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-Zenwind.

Equilibrium (2002)

2007-05-30T10:29:00.000+07:00

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*Equilibrium* (2002) is a film that I highly recommend. Written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, it portrays a dystopian future. It stars Christian Bale, and also appearing are Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, Angus MacFedyen, with Sean Bean and Sean Pertwee. It was filmed mostly in Berlin and has the creepy feel of Nazi-era architecture.
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It is possible that Wimmer borrowed much of his vision for this flick from Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, Fritz Lang, etc. But his championing of individualism against conformity is very powerful here and worth watching for its own virtues. I like the mood of this movie. And libertarians should like the overall story.
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Without giving spoilers, I will just say that after a devastating World War III, the rulers among the survivors try to build a world in which war will never happen again. They see elemental human nature to be dangerous and evil (a “Hobbesian” or “original sin” outlook). To prevent war and murder, all war-like human emotions such as anger and hate must be eliminated. So everyone is required by law to take regular “interval” doses of a drug which completely kills all emotions, all feelings and all passions.
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All positive feelings and passions are killed also -- all emotions connected with love, empathy, art, literature, music, etc. -- but this is considered to be a worthwhile trade-off as long as murder and war are gone. It is a world of humorless zombies (sort of like my image of an Objectivist Hell run by the ARI elite). The shuffling human masses remind me a lot of Fritz Lang’s *Metropolis* (1926).
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The punishment for "sense crimes" (i.e., not taking your interval dose and thus being enabled to "feel") is prompt execution. All artworks, books and music are destroyed immediately when discovered. There is no compromise. The primary enforcers of this totalitarian rule are the Grammaton Clerics, whose implacable dedication and extreme "gun kata" martial arts training makes them indomitable.
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I did notice one piece of artwork that was apparently allowed to be in the office of one of the top rulers (Angus MacFedyen). It was a statue of Atlas, crushed down under the oppressive weight of the world. Hmm. There is something familiar here. This makes me wonder about Kurt Wimmer’s intellectual lineage.
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There is a underground resistance movement in this society, and they consider their best ally to be *human nature*. This would be the Lockean or Jeffersonian view of humanity. Can you imagine if the very first piece of music you ever heard was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? How would you feel?
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-Zenwind.

Gothics North Face

2007-05-29T22:20:00.001+07:00

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This was one of the most memorable winter mountaineering experiences I have had.
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In late winter 1985, a Bruce Springsteen song was on the radio all the time. So we called this ice climbing trip the Great "Born in the USA" Ice Tour.
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Steve Landin and I went to the Adirondack Mountains in late winter 1985 to do some ice climbing and hoped that the North Face of Gothics Mountain would be in condition to climb. It is almost 1,000 feet of bare rock that sometimes ices up in later winter with good frozen snow. It is one of the great Adirondack winter classics.
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The mountain is located up in the High Peaks region. Fast and light skiers can leave their car, ski up to the mountain's base, climb the north wall, retrieve their skis and return to the roadhead in one day. But for us, the trails were covered in hard ice, and it would be a three day expedition with two bivouacs: one day to the foot of the mountain, one to climb the face and one more to return.
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Saving weight was imperative, so many things had to be left behind. We decided to leave the tent, the snowshoes and the rope. We would carry ice boots, crampons, two hand-tools apiece, sleeping bags and pads, and a cooker and pots.
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Day One: We carried up to the foot of Gothics Mountain and bivouacked. I was horribly cold, because I had been too fanatical about light weight gear, and I took too light a sleeping bag. The few more pounds of a warmer bag would have been great. I was experimenting with a "vapor barrier liner" concept for a sleeping system. Somewhere between theory and reality, I shivered all night.
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Day Two: The climb. The first section of the North Face was terrifying verglas.
This is hard water ice only a quarter of an inch thick over solid rock. It is too thin to get in a deep axe placement, but it is hard and slick. Only one of my picks was of the newer design that would hook in at all, so I had to front-point up one-handed. I momentarily thought of chickening out and climbing instead the tree-lined slope off to the side of the face. I was extremely scared climbing this section unroped but started up anyway behind Steve. He was a much stronger climber and had hooking capability for both his picks, so he found the route, led it and set an example for me. He gave me a constant "psychological belay." One scary spot was a traverse across a small gully. Steve was anchored only by one axe placement, but he swung over a sling for me to grab. This gave me the courage to make the move across.
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The middle section of the face was beautiful. It was that deep re-consolidated frozen snow that you can run up. Crampon points and hand-tool picks sink in easily and hold. It was fun, and we made good time up this. By the time I had caught up to Steve near the top of this snow section, he had chopped two "buckets" in the snow for us to sit in and rest. In traditional alpine manner, he shared chocolate as we looked down the mountain. A snowstorm was heading straight for us from the northwest, so we did not stay long.
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The top section of the face was more grim. It was mixed with a lot of bare rock, some powder snow and a little ice. Straight up was out of the question, for it was bare rock without weaknesses. We went up diagonally to the left through mixed ground. Steve did the route-finding.
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One small traverse involved carefully placing the right crampon front-points into a small iced rock depression for a delicate temporary movement of weight-distribution. I moved like a phantom, barely breathing, with hundreds of feet of void beneath my heels. I remember thinking: The entire consciousness of the cosmos is focused on the placement of one-and-one-half crampon points on a tiny bit of crumbling ice.
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Easier ground was eventually gained with the summit ridge in sight. As we gained the ridge, the snowstorm was swirling around us, almost a white-out. We got to the summit and took some photos. The void below us that should have been the North Face was completely enveloped in blowing snow. These are the conditions that the Scots climbers enthusiastically call "full conditions."
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We blindly descended the West Ridge and got to the pass between Gothics and Mt. Saddleback (the same pass I had camped at with frozen toes in January 1976 - see blog entry "Frostbite Trip"). The snow was very heavy as we trekked down to our bivouac gear by dark. We hauled it to an ADK leanto on the trail below. We cooked a supper and tried to sleep as snow swirled around our noses.
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Day Three: It was a hellish labor to haul our packs down through thigh-deep snow. We should have brought the snowshoes! Agony and discouragement, I wanted to just lay down and die. I thought of Albert Camus' discussion of the Myth of Sisyphus. The only thing that kept me going was Marine mentality and a dose of Ayn Rand. Perhaps it was also the pathos of Springsteen's lyrics, still going through my head, "Born in the USA," that gave me some grit.
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As we finally called an end to this climbing trip and started the drive back home, guess what song greeted us on the radio? "Born in the USA... Born in the USA." It was one hell of an ice tour.
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-Zenwind.

Minus 40 Degrees

2007-05-29T22:03:00.000+07:00

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(Part 1 of a 3-part saga. Part 2: “The Coldest of Ice Climbs.” Part 3: “Chouinard’s Gully.”)
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My coldest experience in the outdoors was in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York in February 1979. I (barely) endured 6 days and nights bivouacking out in temperatures that got down to Minus 40 degrees every night. (-- 40 F = -- 40 C.)
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It was the week that I went there to ice climb and bivouac. I had picked the week of the Full Moon, of course, for reasons of aesthetics and zen.
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Back home on my father's farm in Pennsylvania, the pre-dawn temperature was --28*F every day that week. It was -30*F that week in nearby towns. That is as cold as it ever gets in this part of Pennsylvania. My father kept a weather journal from personal observations and from TV and radio news.
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The coldest spot in the USA (including Alaska) for that entire week was -45*F at Old Forge, NY, in the heart of the Adirondacks. Lake Placid, NY was -35*F. I was bivouacking up in Chapel Pond Pass, sleeping on the frozen pond. I had a good thermometer, but it was too damn cold to be fiddling much with thermometers. I rounded it off to -40*F from quick readings. There was a bitterly stiff wind, but it was too cold to think about the additional wind-chill calculations. "Desperately Frigid" sums it up.
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I had an excellent integrated sleeping bag system designed by Paul Petzoldt: an enormously thick Polarguard suit (parka and pants suitable for extended winter camping, with double insulated booties), and it all fit without constriction both over my wool clothes and also into a companion tailor-fitted Polarguard sleeping bag.
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At supper's finish, I would put a quart of hot water into a water bottle and throw this into the sleeping bag.
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Yet for the first 4 nights, I was extremely cold. I would wake up, shiver for 2 hours, then sleep for 1 hour out of exhaustion. Wake up, shiver 2 hours, sleep 1 hour, etc. On each of these mornings, the water bottle had a quarter of an inch of ice in it. I had to break the ice to drink. That bottle had been *inside* the sleeping bag all night, between my parka and the bag, and it still froze.
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During these nights, as I tossed and turned, shivered and cursed, the lone round Moon ruled the sky and lit up the entire snowy world. Cold silver silence. It was beautiful and severe. No pity from the big orb.
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Silence ruled, until the pond ice beneath me suddenly let up a loud echoing "Crack!!!" sound. This terrified me. I had imaginings of the ice suddenly opening up and swallowing me, trapped inside my mummy bag. But it was just the groans of the ice forming deep below me. The Moon remained silent above it all. It was spooky.
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The last 2 nights were better, yet the temperature and wind-chill were the same. The only adjusted variable was my food intake during the night. During the 4th of my sleepless nights, I had remembered reading advice from the great mountaineer Paul Petzoldt about taking a bag of food into the sleeping bag with you. If you wake up cold, eat.
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It worked dramatically. I would wake up chilled, and, without waiting for it to get worse, I would sit up (not even opening the mummy bag opening) and feed myself. I had chocolate, cheese, pepperoni, nuts, dried fruit, etc., though I had to chop up the frozen pepperoni and cheese into bite-size chunks with my ice axe prior to bedtime.
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I would eat, but the warmth did not come until about a half hour later. Initially, I felt chilled. It took time to metabolize the food. Then, a cozy glow of warmth spread completely over me, and I fell into a delightful sleep. I would wake up 3 hours later, chilled. I would eat again, like throwing wood on a fire. Again, I experienced a half an hour of chill before the food metabolized and warmed me up. For those last two mornings, there was no ice in the water bottle. My increased body heat prevented it.
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Lesson: food creates warmth. I am a slow learner, but this is one empirical lesson that is high on my certainty scale. (Having extra food in your home or car if you are stranded may save your life.) Paul Petzoldt had written this clearly in his *Wilderness Handbook*, based on his decades of experiences, but I had not taken the lesson to heart until my very bones were shaken with deep chill.
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It was the coldest Moonlight I have ever experienced. The Hobo of Chapel Pond made it through, gaining some wisdom and feeling humble.
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(This saga is continued in Parts 1 and 2.)
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-Zenwind.

The Coldest of Ice Climbs

2007-05-29T21:58:00.000+07:00

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(Part 2 of the Minus 40 Degrees Saga.)
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My previous entry described the agony of bivouacking in the extreme temperature of minus 40 degrees F in the Adirondacks (February 1979). These next two entries will describe the ice climbing that week.
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All the climbing was done in Chapel Pond Pass. Chapel Pond Slab is a 500 foot face with a long, high, steep direct line at the very top. There are a host of other, mostly shorter climbs nearby.
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The great American climber, Yvon Chouinard, had just published his book, *Climbing Ice*, an incredible Bible of ice climbing. I had studied it diligently. Every ice climber around was discussing the techniques and lore of this work, and we were eager to see what we could do.
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One morning, I met two hardy North Carolina climbers who had never experienced an Adirondack winter. They were also relative novices at ice climbing like myself.
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I was alone and really wanted another human on the other end of my rope, so I schemed to team up with these guys, since they seemed sensible and reliable. The problem is that a rope of three climbers is too cold in winter, because there is a lot of wait-time while only one climber moves at a time. A rope of two is faster and warmer.
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I plotted to con them into roping up with me. I wandered up to the foot of the Slab area with them, giving them a guided tour. The entire lower section of the Slab is lower angle and was covered with extremely climbable firm frozen snow - very solid and very good for using the flat-footed French Technique, which is restful and really saves the leg muscles from the strain of Front-Pointing.
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Front-Pointing is more instinctive, like climbing a ladder, but it tires you out quickly. It is the necessary technique on extremely steep ice. French Technique is awkward and hard to learn, but I had been practicing. So, I started "French-stepping" immediately up the face, un-roped, looking like a French guide, chattering away about climbing techniques and history.
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It worked. They thought I was an accomplished ice climber, and, when I asked them if they wanted to rope up with me, they said yes. We worked our way up the lower part of the snow-slope, me teaching them how to conserve energy by French-stepping.
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We got to the steep direct section of the Slab and decided it was too hard for any of us to lead, as it would require sustained Front-Pointing on steep brittle ice. So we opted for a shorter, less steep, leftward route up an icy gully that bypassed the harder section. I led up, Front-Pointing and placing several ice screws for protection, then anchored to a tree and belayed them both up to the top with me. We rappelled down another gully.
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They camped that night near my bivouac on Chapel Pond, then they decided the next morning that it was too cold, and they headed home. I never even got their names. I now had to look for new climbing partners.
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I ran into two climbers from southwestern Pennsylvania, Andy and another guy. We talked and decided to climb the direct steep Slab route tomorrow. These guys were great technical climbers with excellent knowledge of climbing and its history. They were safety minded and cool. But they were not prepared for Adirondack winter and were not dressed for it. They wore knickers and knee-socks, suitable for a summer climb in the Alps. Gloves instead of mittens. And, worst of all, they stayed the nights in motels, ate in restaurants, and drove in their pickup truck to the climbs. By being in heated environments, the shock of minus 40 degrees was too much, and they would become frostbitten in the end.
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We started up the Slab, me free soloing again up the snowy lower part French-style, while they were safely roped up but going too slow. By my being in constant but relaxed motion, I neither sweated nor got cold. We got to the steep ice wall at the top section of the Slab, and I roped up with them, tying on to the second man. Andy led, and I was third. He led boldly and decisively up and over the top. The second man climbed up next, while Andy belayed him.
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I was all ready to follow on belay, when a voice from above asked: "Can you climb off the face on your own? We cannot bring you up." They could not belay me up to them, and my guess was that they were too cold in the brutal summit wind. I yelled back: "Okay, but untie my rope and let me retrieve it." My rope fell back down to my feet. I went off to the left and ascended the gully I had led with the Carolina guys, but I did it roped solo this time. Damn, it was cold up there on top in the wind.
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I traversed over the top of the Slab to meet my two former rope-mates, only to see them slowly staggering up to me. From a distance, I assessed the situation immediately: these guys were severely hypothermic and in great danger in this frigid wind. When I reached them, their speech was slurred and eyes glazed. Their thinking was slow and indecisive, and all I could understand was that they were cold and their hands and feet hurt terribly. They asked: "How will we get down?" I started feeding them chocolate, nuts and other stuff, and giving them lots of water. I tied them to me and led them over to a wooded cliff with plenty of trees for rappel.
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Their hands would not function well, so I tied all knots and rigged all rappels. After many rappels, we got down out of the wind and to the bottom of the cliff, then we trudged back to where their truck was parked. They headed back to town, while I settled in for a night's bivouac again as the Dharma Bum "Hobo of Chapel Pond."
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We had planned to climb Chouinard's Gully together the next day, but they never showed up, and I had to climb it alone, roped solo. When I rappelled to the bottom of this climb, after completing it, my friends showed up, looking a bit beat. Andy's earlobe was frostbitten and his friend had badly frostbitten fingers. They were easily chilled all over, in pain, and on their way home.
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I had decided that morning that this would be my last climbing day this week and that I would head home by dark. I could not bear to spend a 7th night in bivouac at minus 40 degrees. My fingers were cracked and bleeding from the cold, and it was painful to do anything with them.
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I had honed my winter camping skills, avoided frostbite, had done some ice climbing at a higher level of boldness than anything I had ever experienced before. I had watched a cold Moon travel across the skies, lighting up a vast, frozen world. I had a great week's vacation.
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-Zenwind.

Chouinard’s Gulley

2007-05-29T21:32:00.000+07:00

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Part 3 of the Minus 40 Degrees Saga
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This is the third and last entry about my February 1979 ice climbing trip to the Adirondack Mountains when it was 40 degrees below Zero all week. On the last day, I climbed Chouinard's Gully, the ice climb I had most wanted to do.
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This is an ice-filled gully named after the great Yvon Chouinard who first climbed it in the late sixties. It is at Chapel Pond Pass.
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My two buddies from the day before did not show up, and it was too cold to wait around, so I decided to do a solo climb of Chouinard's Gully – roped solo.
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The hardest parts of Chouinard's Gully are near the bottom. The easier upper sections go on through the trees for near 400 feet above the pond. I was armed with an ice axe and a short hammer, both with the classic curved "Alpine" style pick that shattered ice more than penetrated it, and which has been replaced since by more re-curved styles. The crampons on my boots were old-style, and my boots were non-insulated French Galibier Super-guide boots.
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The first crux near the bottom went alright, with only a few scares. I felt like a real mountain climber now.
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Way up, on the second crux, I found myself on a vertical wall of hard, blue, brittle, shattering water ice, while I was running out of strength and starting to freak out. I had "sewing-machine legs," where my legs shook violently, threatening to pop my flimsy front-point crampon placements out. My arms were tiring out quickly and my hands were numb. For every one good axe placement, I had to hammer four times, breaking huge plates of ice off which almost knocked my foot placements out. I looked down at my last ice-screw placement, far, far below. I got really scared. I thought: "I'm going to fall." And I almost did.
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The Zen of Fear.
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I looked down, and knew that down-climbing was unthinkable. I looked up to my right and to my left, and I decided to make one desperate attempt to climb up and to the left to escape off the wall. Crampons almost coming out, I loosened my left-hand hammer-pick and tried for a quick and adequate stick off to the left.
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As I was doing this, a lyric of poetry or song came to my mind from somewhere: "Don't stop me now...." I swung, and the pick stuck. Not a bomb-proof placement. Just marginal. But it stuck. So I kicked in my left crampon further to the left, and then my right one. Then I loosened the right-hand ice axe and, as I was getting ready to plant it directly above my head, the lyrics repeated in my head: "Don't stop me now...." And, after three desperate swings, the axe grabbed a rather feeble hold. Now, with two marginal hand placements, I started to climb up with higher foot placements, and, while doing so, the rest of the lyrics came to me: "...‘cause I'm havin' such a good time." Then, wack in another, higher, left-hand placement, and then the right.
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As I moved up, the lyrics kept cycling through my head. At one point, my axe was shattering the ice and not getting any kind of stick at all, and I got that old feeling of "I'm going to fall." The legs were crapping out, my left-hand hammer would never hold me by itself, and the fear was at my throat. "DON'T ... STOP ... ME ... NOW...." Swing, kick, kick, hammer, kick, kick, sweat, tremble ... "...'cause I'm havin' such a good time." "Don't stop me now...."
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And I moved up and off the vertical wall onto a gentler slope. That song saved my life – or at least saved me from a most grievous fall -- and I could not identify the singer at that point.
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I finished the rest of the climb above, which was much easier. At 400 feet above Chapel Pond, I felt like the champion of the world. I rappelled down the entire climb in several sections, while fragments of that song were triumphantly running through my mind. "Two hundred degrees, that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit. I'm traveling at the speed of light."
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"I'm a shooting star, leaping through the sky." "Don't stop me now, ‘cause I'm havin' such a good time! Don’t stop me now!"
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As I rappelled the last pitch down to the pond, I noticed the two guys from the day before that were supposed to do this climb with me. They were quite damaged by the cold from yesterday's Chapel Pond Slab climb. They were badly frostbitten and were going home. They could hardly believe that I had soloed the Gulley (even if using rope as a safety backup).
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I had had enough of bivouacking and climbing in minus 40 temperatures for 6 days and nights, so the road sounded good to me also. As I fired up my car to head home, the radio played a song that had been on the air a lot in the last few weeks. I suddenly recognized it. It was my song: "Don't Stop Me Now," by Queen.
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"I'm havin' such a good time. Don’t stop me now!"
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-Zenwind.

Roped Solo Technique (old style)

2007-05-29T21:18:00.000+07:00

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I have done a lot of solo climbing, and find these moments to be among the most rewarding and memorable of my experiences on rock, snow or ice. But it was really not always my choice. In my earlier years of learning to lead big climbs, I could not find any climbing partners. Thus, I had to go it solo. When I pulled it off, it felt like a kind of instant satori.
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There are two types of solo climbing: Free-Solo and Roped-Solo.
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"Free solo" is climbing completely un-roped. (See my first on this blog, "Extreme Climbing and Breath Control," for a sample of this insane style.) No net to catch you. This is *fall-and-you-die* climbing, not for everyone.
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(Do not confuse "free soloing" with "Free Climbing," the latter term simply meaning using only hands and feet for the means of going up, without artificially using rope or anchors for aid in ascending. The Free Climber may, and usually does, use ropes for safety back-up just to catch a fall. Free soloing is a species of "free climbing," but it is a rare breed, as free climbers usually do use ropes.)
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"Roped solo" climbing is a slightly safer variation of the solo climb. Roped solo free climbing utilizes a rope and anchor system, not to help you ascend, but solely for safety, to shorten any fall. It, also, is a species of "free-climbing" but is more a type of free lead-climbing, with all anchors and ropes below you, except that you are in this case alone. It is still not as safe as having a living, thinking human on the other end of your rope, feeding out only as much rope as you need while you lead upward above all the anchors. Roped soloing uses trees, rocks and climbing anchors below you as a last-ditch means of keeping you on the mountain. If you fall, you may still fall way down past your highest anchor for a long way before the system stops you with a jolt. Maybe.
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In more recent years, I acquired and use a piece of gear called "The Soloist," made originally by Rock Exotica, which makes the whole roped soloing thing much safer. It is a truly wonderful gadget. But there was no such gear when I was really pushing my limits and learning to lead climb. So I had to rely on written advice from climber Royal Robbins' books, *Basic Rockcraft* and *Advanced Rockcraft*, and, though it was state-of-the-art at the time, it was touch and go. A bit scary.
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The technique was to tie one end of the rope to a tree or other anchor, then give yourself enough estimated slack rope-length to get to the next rest ledge above. You tie a loop in the rope at that point and clip it to your harness. As you go up, you place anchors (slings around trees or rocks, rock anchors, or ice-screws) and clip your rope so it runs through the anchor's carabiner. This is similar to the normal leading of a free-climb. If you fall, the distance fallen is at least twice the length of rope between you and that nearest anchor below you. You should not fall all the way down the mountain, but if there is a ledge below you and you have a lot of rope out you can hit it hard. The old mountaineering advice was always: "The leader must not fall." So the soloist must not fall.
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One of the tricks is to find a rest spot before the slack runs out so you can tie another loop further along the rope's length to clip into. Then you must un-clip the old loop in order to give yourself enough slack rope to move further up. Often, the rest spot is only a place where you have one hand momentarily free, and you find yourself tying and untying knots with your teeth while hanging on for dear life with your other hand. These are some of the scariest times, in which you truly get to know yourself well.
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Once you get to the top of the pitch, you tie the rope to a good anchor and rappel down the entire pitch, removing anchors, knots, slings, etc., and untying the bottom end of the rope. As you climb the pitch again, it is no big deal because you are tying and clipping into loops that are on a top-rope, anchored *above* you. Any falls now will be much shorter than they would have been on the first, leading, ascent. Essentially, you have to climb the pitch twice, so roped soloing can be slow work.
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Once you have cleaned the pitch and retrieved all anchors and freed your rope, you start the next pitch, tying the bottom end of the rope to an anchor, giving yourself slack, clipping into a loop, and going up again into new territory above.
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I have used this system countless times on rock and ice when I had no climbing partners, and it gave me that small extra margin of confidence that meant the difference between chickening out or going up.
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Not only did I teach myself how to lead climbs on rock and ice this way, I also learned a lot about facing fear of death when I was totally alone -- without fellow Marines as back-up. On my solo climbs, it was just me, my fear, and the mountain. Mountains have no sympathy. They just sit there, soaring above you or gaping below you. The rest is up to you.
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"Be still as a mountain,
Move like a great river."
~~Wu Yu-hsiang~~
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Roped solo climbing has provided me with moments of deep meditative calm and bliss at the top of the climb, but of course these zen moments are sometimes preceded by moments of sheer terror on the journey upwards. I am a richer person for having ascended these paths.
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-Zenwind.

Encounter on a Rocky Ridge

2007-05-29T20:54:00.000+07:00

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I could have easily killed the furry caterpillar. I could have squashed him or just flicked him off the high rock, condemning him to a very long and treacherous fall. He was unavoidably in my way, just inches away from my face, and he scared me with his bristly, spiky "horns," which looked like they could sting. I met him on the scariest part of a high rock climb in the days when I was still learning to climb.
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I decided to view him with compassion as a fellow climber, and it changed me somehow. This was over 30 years ago, and it is still one of my greatest memories.
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I was free soloing a "chimney" climb. It was fairly secure for the first 90% of the climb, because you are inside a big crack and can just jam your body into place against the opposing walls. But the crux of the climb is the ending, where the chimney crack narrows and forces you out unto the face. The very top turns
into a thin ridge with the narrowing crack on the left and a sheer drop to the right.
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The technique here is to hug the ridge for dear life, straddling it and inching your way up. Your left leg and left arm are jammed into the crack for anchor. Your right leg and boot are applying pressure to the outside wall of the ridge, while your right hand grips the spine of the ridge. Your belly and chest are tight against the rock, as is your face. One tends to get nervous here.
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On this sunny, late spring day, I was moving up this crux section when I saw the caterpillar directly in front of my face on the ridge's spine. He was blond-colored with a pair of black bristly spikes or horns on each end. The spikes looked like stingers of some sort. At this close range, I could see the breeze ruffling the creature's fur but not the spikes, which were rigid. I surely did not want to touch him.
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What to do? Down-climbing was out of the question. I thought that he would have to go and that I would have to flick him off the ridge. But, as I watched him inch his way up the rock with graceful caterpillar-like movements, I felt a kind of sympathy and compassion for him. He was pursuing his own project and was not bothering anyone. Besides, what was a human doing in such a strange place? I was the intruder, the trespasser, the unwanted guest. So, I decided to somehow climb over him without hurting him. It was not going to be easy.
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This was extremely awkward and gave me a feeling of far less security than if I bellied up the rock, hugging it closely. As I started moving over him, I lifted my face about 6 inches above him and noticed that the exhalations from my nostrils were blowing his fur as if in a strong wind. He stopped still, probably wondering what manner of huge beast was hovering over him. I carefully found new positions for my hands and feet, planning out the crucial move when I would move my torso over him, with my weight dangerously out away from the rock.
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As I started the execution of this critical move, I let out a strong, measured exhalation. My poor caterpillar friend looked like he was in a howling gale, with his fur positively flattened by the wind of my breath. He hunkered down, seemingly gripping the rock tighter. I kept 6 inches distance between him and me, and I started climbing up. Looking down between my body and the rock, I moved my chest past him, then my abdomen, then my knees. When it was time to move my feet past him, I looked down with special care, lest my boots would accidentally hit him.
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When I had finally cleared him and when my feet were several feet above him, I looked back to see him continuing on his original path across the rock. It was as if we never had crossed paths. The top of the climb was immediately above, and, when I reached it, I sat in the sun while watching my little friend go about his measured pace to whatever destination he was bound.
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I think of this encounter often. I learned an important lesson about compassion from this caterpillar bodhisattva. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all of us. Laissez nous faire (i.e., "Leave us alone").
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-Zenwind.