Point Lenana
The wind flags the faded prayers
No one notices
Except in passing a glance
At the known
Pray only for the unknown
Look across shrinking glaciers
Huddled in a hut
Alien the Priest of people
Solo climb the line with our eyes
Caress the cold iced cracks
Warm our hands
Feel the anticipation
Lets kneel and bow our heads
Chris Jansen
“The Cederberg is like no other place in South Africa, or even on earth … It is a unique world of fissured and cracked and crazed stone in every shade of ochre and sand and rose and rust. It is surrounded by mountain ridges like endless ranks of jagged teeth, and at sunset and sunrise, they light up in unearthly and glowing colours. It’s like another planet, one with a skin of stone, not soil. The sparse vegetation is specially adapted to this thirstland, and makes up one of the most rare floral kingdoms in the world. For a few short weeks in spring, every valley is carpeted with blazing indigenous flowers. Wherever there is water, a river or rock-pools, there is life: birds, lizards, small mammals, insects. At first, visitors may be disconcerted by the harshness and stillness of the surroundings; within hours, they fall under the spell of the Cedarberg; by the time they leave, they’re in love … it is truly a place of magic.”
Helen Moffat in Lovely Beyond Any Singing
More from Chris Jansen:
5000 ledge
Clothes jerk and flutter
The wind cuts our bodies
Eyes gaunt
Force the elation
Just tired
Cold lava pierce fingers
Numb feet feel for toe holds
Noses drip freezing pearls
Irritated in the wipe
The rope tight
Hurry with care
Swallow the view
Inhale the exposure
Sheer drop down in breathless beauty
Our bodies struggle for comfort
Sleeping bags glued to the ledge.
(Comment: I have not been able to get hold of Chris, but I presume this poem reflects our bivvy at 5000m on Mt Kenya a few years ago. Good writing mate!)
Two sisters, two birthdays, lots of surprise balloons from a great friend, our favourite green field, some party guests, and there it was!
[Where are those balloons going?]
From Chris Jansen:
Mountains inspire awe in any human person who has a soul. They remind us of our frailty, our unimportance, of the briefness of our span upon this earth. They touch the heavens, and sail serenely at an altitude beyond even the imaginings of a mere mortal.
Elizabeth Aston, 2005
voer die fris fêrrie …
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will. And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.
If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe~
from the logbook at top of Brandberg:
Clay lies still but blood’s a rover
Breath’s a ware that doesn’t keep
Up Lad! When this journey’s over
There’ll be time enough for sleep
c/o of good mate Stephen Quirke!
Care of my friend Chris Jansen:
In the mountains there is the promise of… something unexplainable. A higher place of awareness, a spirit that soars. So we climb … and in climbing there is more than a metaphor; there is a means of discovery.
~Rob Parker~
And now Mr. Chesterton?
“Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.”
William Blake
“One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”
GK Chesterton
Howe Sound in May. No sign of Spring.
At the end of the earth (Finisterre Island) with Brian, a good day out!
Photos: Brian Williams
This paragraph from Rowan Greer*:
The paradox of the Christian life is that the evils we suffer in our earthly pilgrimage must be taken with absolute seriousness, but so must the destiny that awaits us in the City of God. There are no victories or defeats in the present that really matter. All that counts is the final victory for the saints in the age to come. The practical implications of Augustine’s view is that what matters is to endure. The Christian can be neither fully involved in society nor fully withdrawn from it … I am persuaded by Faulkner’s view that we cannot alter the tragic character of human life, but we can endure and so prevail.
Not meant to suggest passivity nor irrelevance and insignificance with regards to our daily travails (or small victories and defeats), but a simple reminder that in endurance lies our testimony to the victory of Christ. (Phil 2:12-13; 4:4-9)
*Rowan Greer, “Broken Lights and Mended Lives” (PennState UP, 1986)
Subscribe
