Young, And Adventurous

It takes imagination, curiosity, energy and a true sense of adventure to set off for the purpose of exploring the geography of this planet. And no geographic areas of this planet are as mysterious and grand than the highest mountain peaks that can be ascended. How utterly admirable to be geared toward this kind of physical exertion. How utterly frustrating to view such expeditions with admiration and be unable to execute them.

Viewing photographs of someone else's climbing exploits will have to suffice for most of us. The remoteness of the mountains, their steel-grey, hard granite atmosphere with alpine growths reminding us, between the glaciers and the snow that will never melt, of how fascinating and amazing the natural world around us is.

And how puny, insignificant and vulnerable all at the same time, the human presence is, upon this Earth. We explore the ocean depths to find amazing organisms, diverse and colourful, thriving where none could be conceived of; remote jungle interiors where stone-age tribes thrive, disinterested in the larger world around them, invested in maintaining a style of life that has meaning and value to them.

And we - some of us - ascend seemingly hostile aeries to discover, when we've planted our frail and small tent, all that comes between us and the elements, that these high elevations also represent grazing areas for cattle, left to their own devices, and just occasionally and briefly accompanied by a shepherd devoted to his task and to his flock.

This is our world. We inhabit it diversely and sometimes without due regard for its well-being, while being fully apprised of the need for our own. This is the world that gives us succour, that represents our haven in an immense, unknowable cosmos whose far reaches even now advanced telescopic photographs are beginning to delineate and inform cosmologists.

There may be some advanced thinkers who believe there will come a time when human beings will transform themselves from earthlings to cosmos-dwellers, spiralling away from the Earth in spacecraft purpose-built to traverse time and space. For them exploration of outer space holds fascination and promise for the future.

For the rest of us, what we have here on Earth represents our lives, our livelihoods, our long journey from birth to death.

Photographs of Spanish mountains and French Pyrenees, Jordan Rosenfeld.