Mountains

Whenever someone would ask a mountaineer why they climb mountains, the answer has always been completely universal, across different cultures, backgrounds, history, and race:

"Because it's there."

When I first heard this, I didn't understand it. Who would? It's so vague, and doesn't answer anything. But I think I get it now, so I'll try to phrase it better.

The mountain stands a juxtaposition to the world below; it towers on endlessly vertically, veiled in snow and cloud, completely uninhabited. If you live around mountains, I feel that you will agree when I say it feels like the mountain stares at you from above - it's constantly there, even if you look away.

Obviously there is the idea that climbing mountains is a metaphor for self-conquest, but I honestly don't think that's it. I don't think "Oh, I wanna be better, stronger" is the reasoning for why climbers do what they do. I don't think any of them think about it that much.

No, it's much simpler. The mountains are an escape - an escape from the world below, from people, from jobs, responsibilities, stress, and all else that can be considered to weigh down on a person. They ascend the vertical spires not out of any desire to better oneself, but to become more free:

Mountains grant freedom. Freedom from people, worries, it grants solitude to those who seek it. The unpleasantries of the world below get washed away in the pure whiteness. You start to become one with the rock, with the cruel indifference of nature. Its cold embrace is comforting, if sharp. The mountains constantly stare not out of malice, but out of objective indifference, and such an attitude lures those who hear its wails and lay their eyes on its rock faces like a siren bringing the sailors to the rocks. You could equate it to a call of the abyss, and yet, ironically, the abyss is not a bottomless pit, but an extrusion from the earth to the heavens. 

Mountaineers feel this gaze, that coldly invites them in - they feel the temptation to leave the world below and rise, rise up to the sky, to leave behind humanity in their lone ascent to the top. They climb mountains simply because... 

...The mountains are there. By their mere existence, they feel that gaze.

And the view from the top is something else altogether. Then you see, you realise, why the mountains gaze down so indifferently - because everything below becomes so small, so insignificant, so trivial, that the only recourse of action is to be indifferent. It's not even worth considering for a moment what goes down in the world of humanity, I mean, who cares? You're up here! 

You're free!