The View from the Mountain

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

T.S. Eliot

We learn through experience but modern life can rob us of the elemental tools we need to create our own perceptions and opinions about the world. Not only can media simulate real life experiences such as riding a roller coaster or playing a guitar but our reliance on crowd acceptance of a place, person or idea has reached an all-time high due in large part to social media.

While all of this has its place, there is no substitute for the direct experience.

In Travels, an autobiographical travel diary, author Michael Crichton (ER, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park) wrote:

“I eventually realized that direct experience is the most valuable experience I can have. Western man is so surrounded by ideas, so bombarded with opinions, concepts and information structures of all sorts it becomes difficult to experience anything without the intervening filter of these sources. And the natural world — our traditional source of direct insights — is rapidly disappearing. Modern city dwellers cannot even see the stars at night … it’s no wonder people lose their bearing, that they lose track of who they really are and what their lives are really about.”

And he wrote this BEFORE blogging, Facebook and Twitter. Imagine how great the increase in those “information structures” he mentions has become and then how great the distance has become between us and direct experience.

Travel allows us to reconnect with our natural insights, to see the stars and to gain perspective on our external and internal landscapes. That said, it’s difficult to travel as much or as long as we’d like but it helps just to go somewhere new, even in your own city or region. 

With that in mind, last weekend Dave and I headed out early toward the Angeles Crest to Mount Wilson (home of the Wilson Observatory). Even though the sky was filled with huge rain clouds, the view was stunning. It was clear enough for us to see beyond the streets filled with little houses, over the port, out across the silvery-grey ocean and to Catalina Islands miles away.  Sitting at the edge of a huge boulder above the trees was akin to soaring.

As we started to make our journey back down the mountain we were stopped by a mountain biker who had placed his bike and himself in the way of our truck. He was obviously in a desperate situation. He told us he couldn’t ride any more; he couldn’t even work the brakes for a downhill run, and asked for a lift off the mountain. So we put his bike in the back and listened as he recalled the ambitious 100-mile journey he had attempted that day — half of it on a steep incline up the mountain. He had set out with athletes of Olympic caliber who didn’t wait for him as he fell farther and farther behind.

I am sure his friendship with that group will never be the same, but then, neither will he. When he woke that morning he had no idea what he was or wasn’t capable of. He found out. How many of us push ourselves to the limit, and then go even beyond that? It’s something we need to do in order to really learn about ourselves. Now that man knows what he can do. If he simply leaves it at that and has learned where his limitations are, that’s good. If he takes it a step further and now views that limitation as a goal, or a new line to be crossed and conquered, then all the better.

This is an important shift in perception. This is what only direct experience, (or if we want to call it really is — confrontation) with our own nature teaches us. Our external travels are also internal ones and when they meet up along the same seemingly insurmountable mountain we learn so much more than if we had never taken that journey at all.