The view from above
Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless.”
Rebecca Solnit • A Field Guide to Getting Lost
When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with outstretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt mys
... See moreAntoine de Saint-Exupéry • Wind, Sand And Stars (Harvest Book)
[I]f you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.
Thomas F. Hornbein • Everest: The West Ridge, Anniversary Edition
Things look different from up there, which explains why Thoreau’s world, like that of Diogenes and Zhuang Zhou, is full of reversals.
Jenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
imagine what looking up at the dome of the sky felt like for him. It must have been a combination of awe and intimacy. When we look up, there is awe certainly, but no longer any intimacy.
Richard Holloway • Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
Like pain, a mountain can be a subjective sensation; for all its solidity and fixity of form, it is more than what one sees. It is awe, pleasure, respect, love, fear, and much, much more. It is an ever-changing, maturing feeling.