A View From the Afternoon

2014-12-11 07:33:48.000 – Joshua Perez, Summit Intern

There’s always been something special about a mountain. That something, however, has yet to be decided. To the Greeks, it was a place that the Olympians, the strongest of gods resided. To the Christians, it was a place where Jesus could communicate with the Holy Father. To the explorers, it was a place of conquest to forever immortalize their name. But these reasons all make sense. The mountains were as high up as mankind could go before the Wright brothers came along. Not only that, they are also extremely treacherous places. While it can be difficult to escape the surfeit of organisms anywhere else on earth, one finds the tippy-tops of mountains to be quite…barren. A world that is teeming with life, suddenly forgets to explore the higher altitudes? Nay, it takes the grit of ones who are not shackled by the entitlement to comfort, rather invigorated by the solace of achievement that dare. But why do we dare? Why does one don his or her gear and head outside into a world that barely supports microbes for life? With every layer of synthetically forged material I surround my body with, the outside world still finds the weakness in my armor. With ever step I take, the wind howls cacophonous tones in my ears, the air is pulled from my lungs, the feelings slowly subside from my extremities. I find myself scared to open my eyes. Scared because of the napalm and shrapnel that penetrates my arctic tested goggles, and even more so scared of the monster that is constantly trying to consume me. Yet when man rejects the comfort of ignorance, and defiantly opens his eyes, he finds he had never seen the sun before.

Joshua Perez, Summit Intern