Climbing for Mother, God and Country
Carabiners, those metal D-rings used by
mountain climbers, make good key rings and give their owners
status. So do items of clothing that suggest the wearer is a
climber. Once the bailiwick of specialty shops that also sell
canoes, mountain tents, and sleeping bags suitable for
comfortable dozing in a deep freeze, a climber's wardrobe can
now be bought in classy boutiques by people whose idea of
outdoor adventure is putting the cat out on a stormy night.
Fifty-five American colleges and universities offer a major in
'outdoor adventure education', a curriculum that treats
climbing as next to Godliness. In Lander, Wyoming, the
National Outdoor Leadership School does a land-office business
that includes exporting this curious fad, climbing, to some of
the poorest places in the world.
By the beginning of the 20th century, poets and
gentlemen-sportsmen, the original climbing enthusiasts,
surrendered the field to explorers who camouflaged their
imperialist intentions with a thin veneer of science. Only in
recent decades has climbing re-emerged as a sport, now
de-politicized and democratized. Ellis observes that the
writings of mountaineers in these several phases is remarkably
different. Characterized by a cool indifference to danger,
discomfort, disaster and death, the narratives produced by the
period of exploration are the most astonishing. If the
mountaineers as explorers/scientists are not telling us about
the rigors of mountaineering, what else, Ellis wonders, are
they not telling us? Answering this question is the purpose of
this book and the answer, obviously, is that mountaineering as
exploration/science was also a political project, an exercise
in western imperialism.
Ellis, however, enriches the obvious with considerable
detail and fresh insight. He begins by examining what European
didn't know, or thought they didn't know, about the world in
the early 20th century. Filling this void was the
responsibility of various national geographical societies that
produced a voluminous literature, itself a form of pop culture
in its day. He then focuses his attention of three different
climbers. First is Halford Mackinder's 1899 climb of Mt.
Kenya, a unique event in Mackinder's life that engendered the
'geographical pivot' theory, a murky, controversial idea that
control of the heartland, an uncertain place somewhere in
Asia, or possibly Africa, leads to control of the "world
island," and consequently the world. Mackinder was still
producing new versions as late as 1943. To get to Mt. Kenya,
Mackinder traveled through a landscape devastated by building
the conveniences that allowed him to pass through the
desolation in the first place, a fact that escaped him
entirely. Some geographer! He is still worshipped at Oxford
University, though the rest of us wonder why. Second is the
American Annie Smith Park who explored Huascarán and Illampu
in South America in the first decade of the 20th century. Her
narratives are gripping adventures with a gender-laden
subtext. Something of a hero in feminist circles, Park thought
that men were genetically adapted only for walking downhill.
Primarily, however, she was an advocate for crass economic
imperialism. Finally, John Baptist Noel was the photographer
for the Mt. Everest climbs in the early 1920's. Not much of a
mountaineer himself, he was content to film the events and
from the goodly distance of two or three miles at that. Here,
then, is his contribution, the application of technology to
achieve the post-modern spectator view of events for which
tourists are often criticized. Why bother with all this risky
climbing nonsense when we can just buy a ticket, fly in, frame
our shots, and get out?
Ellis' essays are an interesting and important contribution
to both our understanding of mountaineering and to the history
of geographic thought and literature. This will be the book's
primary readership: mountain climbers and students, probably
doctoral candidates, in geography. If, however, the book is
relegated to such a narrow audience, a considerable hurt will
have been done to America's reading public. In his epilogue,
Ellis compares two short plays about mountaineering. The
earlier one places events in the context of the rise of Nazism
and portrays 'the race to the top' as a project symbolizing
important nationalistic objectives, for everyone, that is,
except the climber who knows the mountain is just a mountain,
without further meaning. In the latter, the story takes place
in a contemporary, recreational setting. As the climb evolves
from a merely fun adventure to a crisis, one of the characters
reflects that this is, for heaven's sake, his pass-time, not
his life.
The observation makes Ellis' point clear that our presently
de-politicized recreation and leisure time activities, be they
mountaineering, river floating, bird watching or golf, are
anything but de-politicized. Consequently, the book could just
as well be about golf or bird watching as mountaineering. In
the face of globalization, our pleasures are activities laden
with economic and political meaning that encourage us to 'seek
out connections between culture and empire, geography and
literature'. Ellis' book, consequently, should be required
reading by all those who wish to take their leisure and
recreation seriously, and that is pretty much all of us.
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