Climber of Mountains

SINCE ERNST1 HAS DIED, again and again the metaphor the mountain climber has come to mind as expressing how he lived his life. A mountain climber, endlessly experiencing the greatness of each mountain he climbed, its special character and unique qualities, he discovered on foot what its vistas were, savoring and forming deep in his mind and heart each of those discoveries. When he spoke of a mountain he knew, it always was like a richly remembered encounter with a wonderful friend, who never would be completely known, the mystery of something infinite, never finished.

He climbed mountains, though physically he was never vigorous or robust. He was tenacious, determined, highly disciplined—and filled with eagerness, excitement, keen appetite, nervous tension, obsessive worry. The tension, anxiety, anguish were always there, but his spirit and his mind could also soar, lifted by a vista, a creature, a breeze, an idea, to join the universe. He set foot knowing it would be a new adventure, each time, full of risk; what would he come to see, be moved by—what grandeur, awesomeness, vastness, sudden intimacy, helplessness?

He climbed, sometimes, with a guide. Whenever he described any of these guides, he conveyed vividly the man's attitude, demeanor, behavior, with few words but with the quality of inner connectedness. I think the attitude of these guides touched something central in himself. They brought to each climb all their experience, knowledge and sense of the mountain and its terrain, but they were alert and ready to experience it that day, in that moment, as it was, aware of each possibility and its consequences, and ready to act.

In the mountain climbing of his mind, he went off alone. He had tremendous courage in his exceptional devotion to the task of discovering and experiencing the terrain, no matter what—of seeing and finding what there was to see and find. I know that he himself