Mary Louise Pratt’s somewhat disparaging description of the political and scientific atmosphere during explorations like the La Condamine expedition sound alarmingly similar to more recent expansions of knowledge. The space race provides a pertinent example of how nationalism and the quest for scientific supremacy in a modern world can drive a wedge between potential collaborators…

My first impressions after reading Mountains of Minds is that Robert Macfarlane truly understands the sport of mountaineering and that he holds a pure passion for what mountains and the sport represent for not only himself but for people throughout history. I can honestly say that his imagery that he creates within his writing is powerful…

The way early Europeans were conditioned to view mountains had been ingrained in both their literary and religious heritage. Mountains were viewed as being ominous and foreboding, while still have a religious significance. In Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory, the history behind the cultural significance of the geological structures was explained through the use of…

Mountains of the Mind does an excellent job of articulating the way in which people have viewed mountains throughout history. Going from roughly the sixteenth or seventeenth century to the present (when the book was written), Macfarlane really portrayed well how the general public viewed and thought of mountains. What was interesting and stuck out…

Robert Macfarlane’s and Marjorie Hope Nicolson writings and pieces evoked in me a new wonder and enjoyment for mountaineering that I had not known was there. His wonderful imagery and the way that he recounts the history of mountains and the human race stirred something in me. This coupled with his obvious passion for the subject…

Week 3 – Reading Response to Mountains of the Mind Bryant Lymburn Robert MacFarlane’s book of Mountains of the Mind describes the mentality of mountain climbing culture through history using the accounts of famous explorers and rich aristocrats, while at the same time combining his personal experiences with the historical accounts. The book focuses on…

I really enjoyed Robert Macfarlane’s style of writing in this book; how he broke it down going back and forth between the history of mountains and geology to his own stories.  His stories really drew me in and kept the history sections a little more interesting every time he went back to them.  When he…

From the beginning of Macfarlane’s novel I knew it was going to be a fast read because of the way he was able to describe the thrill and obsession of mountaineering in a seemingly colloquial yet elegant way. The beginning of the first chapter was enough to do it. The title “Possession” already rang in…

The evolution of mountains is more than just the movement of tectonic plates crashing into each other, pushing up on each other to create a jagged peaks, and corrupting the earth surface. Furthermore, humans used to see mountains as obstacles and mystical centers of fairytales. However, in the last couple of centuries,mountains have become more…