On page 70 – 71, Rene Daumal explains who and what glaciers are, “…you could learn a lot from the observation of glaciers. Perhaps nature has made them in a first attempt to create living beings by exclusively physical processes.”  Here, I feel Daumal is comparing himself and mountaineers to a glacier and answering the question of who and what he is, which he struggles to answer throughout the book.  He goes on saying, “the glacier is an organized creature, with a head, its permanent snowpatch, which grazes on snow and swallows rocky debris…”  Daumal humanizes glaciers for readers to understand the mystery behind these living creatures that live in the mountains, but also, in a way for readers to understand the mountaineer.  He then says, “Living beings are nourished by chemical processes, while the mass of the glacier is preserved only by physical and mechanical processes – freezing and fusion, compression and friction.”  Is Daumal saying that mountaineers and humans are completely black and white?  Is he comparing himself and mountaineers living and functioning the same way as glaciers do?  “Preserved only by physical and mechanical processes” makes me think so.  It seems like what fuels Daumal is not reaching the top of a mountain, but the journey and preparation to reach the top of the next one.  But in this case Mount Analogue is his last.

The desire of climbing mountains is riskier than physically climbing the mountain.  The fact that Daumal and Sogol want to climb Mount Analogue, a summit that is inaccessible, shows that this could truly be their last climb.  And as for Rene Daumal it was.  Sure enough they both get exactly what they desired in Mount Analogue.  I think Daumal is stressing there is more in the mountaineer than physically climbing a mountain.  The last sentence of the introduction says, “The final work is the consummation of all his years of honing his craft and his soul, surrendering his ego in order to ascend the holy mountain.”  Mountaineers can be looked at as selfish, independent, and egotistical.  Or, and I think as in Daumal’s life, as rough, majestic, and mellow as glaciers who loose their ego when climbing – a necessary task to fully absorb what the mountain has to offer on a spiritual level.  On the descent Daumal mentions that you will no longer see all the difficulties in your path, and also mentions twice in the book the team starting to call each other by their first names and becoming know not from their profession.

Daumal’s story reminds me of Robert M. Pirsig’s definition of the ego/non-ego climber, which is they may appear to be identical, they both place one foot in front of the other, stop when tired, and move when rested, but the untrained ego-climber is an instrument that is out of adjustment, sloppy, and is unhappy because they are not there.  They are looking for what they want which is actually all around them.  It all came together for me when Daumal, on page 114, says, “I would not speak of the mountain but through the mountain.”  Earlier on in the introduction (page 22) the writer says, “the fact is that in his own life he was working hard to prepare many minds for the difficult voyage towards Mount Analogue.”  Eventually the desire becomes something more than physical and mechanical, and it is not just about climbing the mountain.  There is something else that happens on a spiritual that I feel Daumal is trying to get across, but cannot explain because it may be different for each climber.