Mountain Lesson Lessened

Beijing's Olympics' flame atop Mount Everest. Mountains, for some folks, are sacred places. The Olympics, for some folks, has become an affront. Maybe it's just me. Feels as if that Highest among the high dry spots today became a bit lower: lessened to little more than video filler on the morning news; a gas flame sputtering where a human usually draws air from a bottle; meaningless as an Olympics publicity stunt.

How might the I.O.C. have responded had the summit team met disaster, I wonder? The place since Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund has become a climber's cemetery.

Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the World. Sagarmatha, Ocean Mother. Mount Everest, named for a surveyor from an empire half the world away. No pun intended, but while growing up it used to give me chills watching those rare climbing documentaries on tv. Eventually, other docs opened my eyes about cultures in our wondrous world, and their reverence for such places. And then we come to our current-day mindset. The un-ending train of climbing expeditions, where so many others have already been and all the routes imaginable already climbed. Elite, and Extreme, the descriptors for the adventurers: some certainly seeking something less tangible than coming away with another checkmark in a logbook. And others ... Well, there are said to be untold ways to enlightenment; so how is it any less right if they do make their career climbing every high place in succession?

Still, my way isn't any less right, either - and I can dislike a thing I dislike!

And I dislike seeing something very like this mountain lessening happening even in my pre-Olympics Vancouver. The Grouse Grind, named so for the attitude of so many who use what once was a hiking trail up Grouse Mountain: now in the main no longer experienced as a hike, that might possibly refresh the soul plodding step after step higher above everyday concerns. Instead used, like a piece of exercise equipment, like a stair climber is used, for the cardio work-out, for burning off the fat of a sedentary lifestyle; (and now I'm being snarky) -- and afterward, the adherents head off for some over-priced coffee cocktail!

Of course, their way might not be any less right, either.