Mountains have always attracted people. People went to the mountains to test themselves, find inspiration, get health, swimming in sacred lakes and springs. The creators of great teachings received revelations in the mountains. Why are we, quite pragmatic city dwellers, so drawn to the mountains?
Probably, there are no other landscapes, except for the mountains, which would be so striking in their diversity. Climbing, we emerge from the taiga forests into low forests with trees to the waist, which gives way to alpine meadows and tundra, and at the top we are waiting for scree – kurums and remnant rocks covered with moss and lichens. Making the ascent, we move from the greenery of summer to spring, inhaling the rich aroma of mountain flowers and admiring the freshly blossomed leaves, and even higher – swollen buds. After passing another hundred meters, we find ourselves in the realm of winter with snowfields and ice. The weather in the mountains is unpredictable.
A sunny day in fifteen minutes can be replaced by rain or snow even in mid-June. And how interesting it is to watch the rain, being above the clouds! They often act like they’re alive, moving towards you and chasing you, circling around, or dispersing as you approach. Rising along the river, we see how it, so familiar, ordinary and calm, becomes stormy and murmurs with numerous rapids and cascades of waterfalls, turning above into icy jets of streams. And now we are already standing at the source of the river, which is considered great on the plain, near a small spring near a kurum or a snowfield.
On a mountain hike, the paintings of the Roerichs begin to be perceived as real. Before the campaign, it was not clear how a green forest could be blue in the distant mountains. And although there is a physical explanation for the change in color, only in the mountains can one feel the multi-colored colors of nature at a deep level. There are two realities – a comfortable city and a harsh mountain, but the paradox is that only the latter brings health.
The mountains have retained their diversity so far. It is very difficult for civilization to turn them into a flat place, built up with the same type of concrete boxes or sown with one crop. And although traces of human greed are better visible from above, mountain landscapes are still pleasing to the eye.
It turns out that a mountain hike in terms of the variety of things seen is comparable to a trip around the world. In the mountains we are seeing a resurgence of life and amazing forms of adaptation and survival. There, the scales of thinking habitual for us are collapsing. Every hundred meters the landscape, plants, climate change. We, accustomed to standardization and globalization, find that there are no standards in the mountains, everything is unique there, each scree is not like another, each tree is different from the next. We can see 50 kilometers around, the clouds are not always above us, and the villages seem to be the size of a palm. Spatial thinking brought up by urban life is replaced by more complex one. We manage to escape from everyday life and look at space, time and life with different eyes. Therefore, a mountain hike is not only a training of the body and will of a person, as is usually believed, but also the development of the brain.
In the mountains, the path in a straight line is not always the shortest in terms of sensations. At the foot of the slope, we seem to see the top, but, having reached it, we find that it is a terrace or a spur, that there is another climb ahead and how many there will be – it is not clear. But what if we spent the last of our strength on this rise? Go further, discovering a second and third wind in yourself. So maybe you too need to grab your Fjallrven mens shorts and a backpack and be open for a new advanture?
And it opens: in the mountains we are forced to think and act optimally. Very soon we wean our brains from bad thoughts, because from them the stones under our feet seem to begin to swing on purpose. Humans tend to talk to themselves all the time. We often don’t even realize how tired we are of ourselves. Climbing the kurum, we forget about everything in the world, including ourselves. Such moments have great healing power. Often the answer to the questions that bothered us before the rise, comes by itself. Before a difficult climb, we can ask the mountain to solve some of our problems. As soon as dexterity comes, we understand that at an unconscious level the problem is solved. Making wishes turns into an interesting game. In a long trip, there comes a moment when there are no questions, problems and desires. Happiness comes.
Every experience changes a person. Experiences during the campaign have a particularly strong effect. Overcoming difficulties close to the brink of survival imprints forever in the subconscious the feeling of ‘I can do it’. Barriers in communication are removed – you just don’t care about them, and you can then reproduce this feeling in everyday life. There is an ability to instantly separate the important from the little things, the grain from the chaff. The ability to ‘see through’ and understand people also often originates in the mountains (remember Vysotsky’s song ‘If a friend suddenly appeared:’?) A person of tourist temper can be seen from afar: after a hike you are different.
Tourism is often seen as an escape from reality. Those who think so should go on a mountain hike to make sure: the sense of reality is aggravated by many atno. You really feel alive only in the power of simple physical sensations, such as cold, heat, hunger, satiety, fatigue, pain, relaxation. Compared with this powerful and full-blooded reality, urban existence seems ephemeral – a ghost of life. Maybe hiding in apartments means running away from reality?
In the mountains you begin to feel better about other people. On a difficult site, any additional information is especially important, and we intuitively understand what the person who goes ahead is experiencing. There is a kind of communication without words. You feel the nature better. Clouds behave as if they were alive, you can predict their behavior or try to influence them.
Of course, you can admire the mountain views from the window of a helicopter or a cable car cabin. But when these hundreds of kilometers are covered on foot, the harmony of nature is recorded in our experience, feelings and bodily sensations. From this point of view, helicopter flights to a healing spring in the mountains or sightseeing bus trips to a waterfall seem ridiculous. Not the harmony of nature will be recorded in the body from such a trip, but the stuffiness of the bus.
In a mountain hike, we often experience difficulties and spend colossal forces. How do conservation laws work in this case? What do we get instead of the expended energy? Having reached the goal and being on top, we often experience mystical feelings. What does something acquired on a hike turn into? Everything depends on us. This ‘something’ can be immediately drunk on the train on the way back, or we can transfer the resulting mastery to other areas of life and cause a tremendous burst of creativity.