“You have to be very strong to live close to God or a mountain, or you'll turn a little mad,” says Rumer Godden.
Re-reading her novel Black Narcissus the other day, I remembered all the reasons I had always loved this lady writer. And what is not to love about Black Narcissus? A group of young Anglican nuns are tasked to set up a school and medical clinic in a former Indian prince's "seraglio" high in the Himalaya--a few days walk uphill from Darjeeling. It doesn't take long before things start to unravel. One falls madly in love with the local unkempt British agent (a man of questionable character); while another becomes fixated on her desire to have children by the helping of the local children that borders on a complete lack of understanding of cultural sensitivities; one is taken up in a grandiose plan to create a garden; while even the sister superior is not immune as she becomes more and more wrapped up in memories of a failed romance back in Ireland. They find themselves unable to stop gazing at the mountains for hours upon end and experience varying levels of elation. They feel happier and yet undeniable less committed to the religion that had brought them to this very remote place.
Some might suggest it is the mountains which are to blame.
To be possessed.
In Japan, my tea teacher's daughter was married to a mountain climber. He started off going out for a few weeks a year; then a few months a year. By the end, he quite simply refused to come home. It is the indescribable allure of mountain peaks-- attempting the summit of Everest, George Mallory wrote this one night to his wife in his tent by the "granular light of a Tilley lamp"
Everest has the most steep ridges and appalling precipices that have ever seen. My darling... I can't tell you how it possesses me.
There was Salman Rushdie' s unforgettable character, Allie Cone, who despite having chronically flat feet refused to give up mountaineering--despite the fact that every step was pure pain. Life down in the mudflats can be stifling after all...He wrote:'
“An iceberg is water striving to be land; a mountain, especially a Himalaya, especially Everest, is land's attempt to metamorphose into sky; it is grounded in flight, the earth mutated--nearly--into air, and become, in the true sense, exalted. Long before she ever encountered the mountain, Allie was aware of its brooding presence in her soul.”
For some the allure of this is simply like a drug.
Robert Macfarlane has a wonderful book called, Mountains of the Mind: A History of Fascination.
Macfarlane, a mountain climber himself, takes great care to make one point clear: that it is not that mountains themselves have the power to possess us, but rather that possession occurs at precisely that disjuncture between the real and the imagined. A collaboration between physical form and human imagination-- the Readers of these Pages will understand if I suggest here that imaginary possession is a kind of mood. Mountains surely have possess a powerful draw on our imaginations in this way. It was Maurice Herzog's famed climb up Annapurna which inspired Macfarlane's own obsession. As a boy, reading about Herzog's climb-- a climb which resulted in the loss of most of Herzog's fingers and toes-- Macfarlane says,
I read Annapurna three times that summer. It was obvious to me that Herzog had chosen wisely in going for the top, despite the subsequent costs. For what, he and I were agreed, were toes and fingers compared to having stood on those few square yards of snow? If he had died it would still have been worth it. This was the lesson I took away from Herzog's book: that the finest end of all was to be had on a mountain-top - from death in valleys preserve me, 0 Lord.
The mountain in question for the nuns is Kangchenjunga, third highest mountain in the world and mystical mountain if ever there was one.
I don't think this line was in the book, but my favorite quote from the movie was spoken by sister superior, in recognition of her spiritual defeat. Overwhelmed by the great power of this place, she said:
"I couldn't stop the wind from blowing and the air from being as clear as crystal, and I couldn't hide the mountain."
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知者樂水 仁者樂山 知者動 仁者靜 知者樂 仁者壽
The wise delight in water while the virtuous delight in the mountains.
A wise person is active and enjoys change while a virtue person seeks serenity and enjoys long life (accepting this as they come)
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