Finding just one aspect from Robert Macfarlane’s writings is difficult, so being from Minnesota and coming to Montana, I focused much during the book on the draw to the mountains and what Macfarlane has to say about it. In relation to last week’s discussion on the draw to mountaineering despite its obvious danger and lack of confidence in a safe ascent and descent, I found the early pages of the book to be helpful in analyzing this. Macfarlane writes “The human values in the stories were polarized, too. Bravery and cowardice, rest and exertion, danger and safety, right and wrong: the unforgiving nature of the environment sorted everything into those neat binaries. I wanted my life to be this clear in its lines, this simple in its priorities” (Macfarlane, pg. 5). Is this how mountaineers, these men/women who risk their lives for the climbing of a mountain see the world? This seems like a very black and white description of life, that is clear of chaos, and added tedious additions to the everyday. Maybe mountaineers can be seen to be very black and white thinkers, at least if their thinking lines up with Robert Macfarlane’s. The mountain seems to be a place of clarity and simplicity, which for many is an escape from everyday life.

Given that Montana is a place for agriculture and mountains, both being a draw for many, Macfarlane’s comparison only a few pages later seems very fitting for a Montana view of his writings. He writes about how three centuries ago the mountains were not viewed the same as they are now, being “agriculturally intractable” and “aesthetically repellant” (Macfarlane, pg. 15). I find this interesting, seeing that now three centuries later, mountains add to the landscape of the world, and many find the mountains to be aesthetically pleasing. Even those who do put their value in agriculture in Montana seem to find enjoyment in the mountains, thus changing the view from three centuries ago.

In relating this book back to myself and my relationship with mountains, as well as many in Montana, or areas surrounded with Mountains, Macfarlane writes in the last chapter about our understandings and writes that “mountains also reshape our understandings of ourselves, of our own interior landscapes” (Macfarlane, pg. 275). This can help us understand a mountaineers mindset in his/her journeys and why they risk their lives for the adventure of climbing, as well as just the average day hiker, skier, camper, or any outdoorsmen that spends their time on the mountain. Macfarlane writes “In their vastness and their intricacy, mountains stretch out the individual mind and compress it simultaneously: they make it aware of its own immeasurable acreage and reach and, at the same time, of its own smallness”(Macfarlane, pg. 275). Depending on where you’re standing, on the top or the bottom, a mountain either puts you in your place, or shows you that you can conquer battles, and climb to the top. With this, I moved to Montana to be in the mountains, since I didn’t get to experience them growing up, and through my years in Bozeman I have grown to feel what Macfarlane writes about and the relationship many feel to mountains, and its power to make a person understand their own interior landscapes.