Kochkor Part II: Shock and Awe

Behind a ruin’d mountain does appear
Swelling into two parts, which turgent are
As when we bend our bodies to the ground,
The buttocks amply sticking out are found.
Thomas Hobbes

But first, I contradict myself

I love cities. I’ve always been a city man, and I love nothing more than soaking up the atmosphere and culture (especially of the café variety) of a vibrant, pulsating city centre. In years past, countryside sojourns were merely a change of pace from urban life, as I never really felt the need to ‘escape’ like I’ve done here. Because I don’t necessarily love the countryside. Sure, it’s pleasant, it’s nice (notice the uninspiring adjectives?), but on the whole, a bit humdrum. Not always, but generally I find weekend getaways, in any country for that matter, to be more beneficial and therapeutic because of what they are ‘not’. So it’s not as if I’m raving wildly about the exquisite Kyrgyz countryside or anything, it’s just that it makes such a refreshing change from the old routine that I’m thankful for some clean, country air and the absence of grimy, Soviet-esque architecture.

But thanks to Jeff, I’ve come to realise that there is so much more to how we view nature, the countryside, open spaces and, most especially, mountains. For on the Sunday of my recent excursion to Kochkor, we hiked in the meandering valleys of nearby hills, which offered stunning views of the mountains. But, deep down, were they really that stunning? And, even deeper down, are mountains stunning at all? Is nature stunning at all? Why do we love nature so much?

The transcendent beauty of literature

Shortly before I departed for Kyrgyzstan, Jeff gave me a book entitled The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman. It’s not the kind of book that would immediately catch my eye, but it has been an absolute gem. It’s made me think of some of the more prosaic things in life in such a different light.

For instance, where does this reverence people hold for nature come from? When people gush and rave about picturesque sights and epic vistas, is it because we have merely been programmed to accept all this at face value? In years past, many people had an intense disdain for mountains. The Romans found mountains to be forlorn, miserable objects. John Donne referred to them as ‘warts on the planet’. Martin Luther considered them ‘part of God’s retribution for man’s fall’, since the world at one point had been perfectly round.

In fact, our modern attitude toward mountains – to what we consider their natural beauty – is a matter of conditioned learning, inherited through literature and theology, which has evolved during the last few centuries to encompass a notion of the sublime in nature: we have been trained what to see and how to feel. The evolution of the whole modern worldview, including the notion of beauty…is exemplified by the evolution of our feelings towards mountains.

And yet we dare not question these notions of the utterly sublime beauty of mountains. There are so many nature lovers out there, that when someone like me comes along and presents his ho-hum attitude towards nature’s many splendours, we are considered strange and abnormal specimens of the human race. Whenever I deign to mention that cities are the true, beating heart of a country, indicative and representative of what that country signifies to the world, I am met with perplexed stares and berating comments. I enjoy pleasurable doses of cultural enlightenment, and the city has always been where I’ve found that. And let’s face the facts: the world is rapidly becoming more urbanised. (for rapid, unbridled urbanisation see sub-Saharan Africa for starters)

Let me be clear: I’m not rubbishing nature and its wonderous splendours. I have a healthy appreciation for nature and some of my fondest memories from childhood are my scouting excursions in gorgeous locations in Washington, Europe and the UK. I can vividly recall exquisite Sicilian sunsets, the visually arresting Cliffs of Moher, the desolate and lonely swathes of the ‘bush’ in Africa and the archealogical marvels of Petra (which is borderline nature/urban anyway).

But the real images that remain indelibly stamped in my mind are the grotesque Soviet-style monstrosities in their varying guises; the seemingly unending sprawl of squalor-mired shantytowns peopled with vendors selling Bibles, tupperware and toothpaste amidst standstill traffic stretching for miles on either side of Lagos; the narrow, cobbled, winding, decrepit and crumbling yet utterly charming streets of Lviv; the sordid and seedy underbelly of many a central/eastern European city in the wee hours...these, more than anything else, are the images that will undoubtedly remain with me far longer than anything I see in the countryside.

I mean, honestly: how can it possibly get any better than this?

Climbing for armchair enthusiasts

I find modest climbing to be, on the whole, a mundane undertaking. I’m not lazy, but sometimes, depending on my mood, even the mildest form of exertion is too strenuous. If I’m promised a sweeping view, I mull the prospect over, and nine times out of ten, I’m in. Yet I hardly know why.

The 19th century American landscapists saw beauty as intrinsic to mountains, which is to say natural, because they thought God spoke directly through nature. But if beauty is actually in the eye of the beholder, then it is not a matter of nature or science or something that can even easily be named. People have the ability to see that something, like a mountain, is beautiful or they do not, in the same way that you may describe in great detail a piece of music to a deaf person, and that person, despite having rationally absorbed what you have said, will still never quite know what the music sounds like…

Because we’ve been programmed not to question the beauty of certain things, we are inevitable disappointed when, after having built the expectations up to a frenzied level, we see the eagerly anticipated object in question and are suddenly faced with that dreaded anti-climactic feeling. Everyone’s been there before: think of films and books, paintings (the Mona Lisa, for example) and sculptures, churches and monasteries, the Super Bowl and the World Cup final, even cities and countries…at some point we’ve all been conned into expecting something marvelous and grandiose, only to be let down by the final product. If you’re human, that is.

Revisiting history for a second, since awe hasn’t always been the natural response to mountain vistas, why and how has our attitude changed so dramatically? Is it that ever menacing urbanisation I earlier spoke of? As cities have grown, has the attraction of the countryside been magnified as a response to this creeping urban sprawl? Years ago, people held fear and terror in their hearts when thinking about mountains, but somehow this fear gradually turned to aesthetic pleasure. Immanuel Kant, a great purveyor of the marvels of natural beauty, described mountain climbing as ‘the terrifying sublime…accompanied by a certain dread or melancholy’. But if we examine the Old Testament (not that I do), we of course see that ‘every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low’.

The transition in our attitudes from fear and inaccessibility to how we view mountains today is very well encapsulated in Marjorie Hope Nicolson’s Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory:

Awe, compounded of mingled terror and exultation, once reserved for God, passed over in the 17th century first to an expanded cosmos, then from the macrocosm to the greatest objects in the geocosm – mountains, oceans, desert.

Glorified Stairmasters for the upwardly mobile?

All of this begets an urgent question. In the 21st century, with all the distractions and delights that rule our lives, with the ease and improving convenience of travel, with the world’s boundaries shrinking, with so much information so easily accessible and at our fingertips, with so few remaining known or unknown unknowns left to be discovered, have we found anything yet to replace the mountain as a new exemplar of sublimity?

It almost seems odd to talk about the sublime today. We are programmed now to expect awe in certain circumstances, and are therefore doomed to be disappointed…when we don’t feel it…this is because when nothing is truly strange or foreign any longer, everything having been predigested, we then demand to be shocked, shock being an experience that still seems genuine to us. Thus we mistake shock for awe.

Cut to the chase old boy, was a good time had or not?

Above and beyond all my philosophical musings, I rather enjoyed myself, but that was primarily due to the company and the accompanying conversation. Still, all in all, it was a good, relaxing weekend away from the city, and I didn’t really ask for much more. Because, you see, I long ago deprogrammed myself from expecting too much. And now I expect nothing and still expect to be disappointed. One of these days, I’m sure I will well and truly be blown away.

As for the panoramas? They were pleasant, as they tend to be in most cases. But nothing more, and nothing less. They were merely pleasant. That, for now, will have to suffice.

Trudging along, with my companions along the ridge

But honestly, can you get a better view than this?