Ed, The highest point in East Anglia is Leith Hill, some 1,800 high, so I didn't really walk mountains until I got to Southern California while approaching middle age.
Getting to the top of our local 5,500 ft mountain was probably less a consequence of testosterone than of my daily mug of beer (and copious quantities of tea). But, isn't it great when you do it? You may be breathless, fatigued, aching, but boy how good it feels as you rest the legs and look across the scenic landscape . But without valleys there would be no mountains, so we must take the lows along with the highs. Harry ___________________________________ Ed wrote: >Ray, your posting about the violinist and his mountain touched me >deeply. In my youth, on the British Columbia coast, I too climbed >mountains, not high and spectacular ones, but high enough because we would >start at sea level. Up there, way up high, we got away from it all and >yet were overwhelmed by it all. We were both alive and dead meat. I >remember lieing on high rocks, half dead because we had climbed five >thousand feet on nothing but testosterone, with ravens perched near us >making their crazy almost conversational sounds, wondering if they should >flap down and pick away at us. Food! Way up high, well above the tree >line because we were so far north, we felt both at one with the world and >very much away from it. If only those earthlings far, far below us >knew! If only they could see! If only they could understand! We were >very young. But we always had to descend from our mountain, back into the >terrible ordinary to resume our everyday lives. Sad. > >Ed Weick ****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
