Climbers On Mt. Mckinley

At 13,000 feet, the icy terrain and higher walls of rock seem so daunting; while the human sense of scale and importance is like a speck of dust. Even the distant hills, much lower in height, shrink in the thin air; their details and forms fade in the intervening mists. The pilots' perspective, circling around McKinley's base, sailing over the Ruth Amphitheater, and turning by the Wickersham Wall is filled with sights which makes me pause to what human life, with all its' ambitions, can really be: a story of humanity's short stay on earth as compared to the vast changes of geological time. Here, in this perpetual place of biting cold, humans think their struggles-- climbing the ridges, walls, and ice falls-- are a greater glory than the giant rock faces they climb. The ranges and gorges, glaciers and naked ribs of rock, carved and shaped by wind and cold, are more than just places to climb; they are the beginnings of the rivers far below, the source of life for the animals and fish and peoples of the land; they are the a frozen gift from the high places. And the climbers, tiny visitors who can stay but a moment on the mountain, experience new wonders; and some feel a deep abiding love that brings them back again in their dreams. Perhaps, it is the mountain, not them, that has conquered the human spirit, though each person will bring back a memory of ice and snow, rock and void, and the blaze of sun in the zone of death .