This morning as I opened my browser, this graphic caught my eye.  I felt compelled to read the story.  The image is of Mount Everest.  I have never been a rock climber and I am well past the age to consider climbing a mountain.  I thought it common knowledge the Everest was the severest of challenges, so extreme that the fit and the well funded have often met their demise at the top of the world upon this mountain.

I’ve done a bit of hiking in the Cascades along the Columbia river gorge and even there in what seems to be a verdant beneficent forest a moment of inattention, and one can fall to ones death at trails edge.  This is not just hypothetical as memorial crosses attest along side the trail.  Nature is never to be taken lightly with hubris; the assumption that everything will  be “ok” because after all, one has the best guide package, etc.

The photo of the summit of Everest is terrifying.  Given the press of humanity on the knife edge of a icy ridge, at oxygen deprived altitude, — some of those people are going to die.  What draws them to such a fate, like a moth to a flame?  I know the question has many answers.  No matter what the reason might be, —  the mountain does not care, and some will die.

I read the article, and will likely read it again.  I speculate this may be a metaphor for what awaits all of us in a more near term than we think. Together we are a mass of humanity supervening the capacity of Nature to sustain our survival.  Nature is being overwhelmed by the extractive effects of our technology, poisoned by our cast off waste, species of all kinds face extinction, etc.  The list of observed effects of humanity on Nature is long and terrifying.  Climate change is a global game changer everywhere, just as it is for those who attempt to summit Everest.

Here are some excerpts from the piece:

The crowd seemed incredible—like a bag of Skittles had been scattered down the slope.

….the Everest experience often seems to have devolved even further into a circus-like pageant of stunts and self-promotion.

Two hours later, on the ridge above the second step, he came upon two frozen corpses lying beside the path. Judging from their torn and faded snowsuits and the patches of snow that covered them, Grubhofer could tell that they had been on the mountain for years; one was missing gloves, and the exposed hands had twisted into claws. “They seemed to be reaching toward me,” he says. The bodies were among as many as 200 corpses abandoned on Everest, most left behind because of the high cost—up to $100,000—and dangers of recovering them. They’re grim reminders of the mountain’s perils, and they’re likely to become more noticeable: As climate change thaws the mountain, the melting snow and ice are exposing additional corpses each year. Grubhofer looked away. “You just move on,” he says. “You refuse to let it affect you.”

If you’d like to read the article CLICK HERE.

PS   I must add, mountains like Everest, are gods, and gods are to be approached with reverence, at a proper distance.  Better to construct a shrine at the base of the mountain for any who desire to be present and view the peak, a site of religious pilgrimage to celebrate the mystery of Nature and our smallness….than to meet ones death climbing the mountain.