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Announcer: This is a Getty

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podcast.

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[Theme music begins]

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Lilit Sadoyan: Hello, I’m
Lilit Sadoyan, the host of

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OMMM, Our Museum Mindfulness
Meditation podcast—Getty’s

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first video podcast.

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Welcome to this Deeper Dive,
where we explore the themes of

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our weekly episodes with experts
in everything from gardening

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to the history of colors.

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Katie Ives: It’s something that
people have struggled to put

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into words, that climbers have
struggled to put into words,

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that lovers of mountains have
struggled to put into words.

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There’s just, there’s
something that’s elusive and

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essential about mountains.

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Sadoyan: This week, we
did a mountain meditation

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inspired by Jean-Joseph-Xavier
Bidauld’s View of the Bridge

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and Part of the Town of
Cava, Kingdom of Naples.

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I spoke with Katie Ives,
who lives a balanced life

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of writing about mountains,
editing stories about mountains,

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researching about mountains,
and climbing mountains, all

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while living on a mountainside.

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We discussed the draw and
power of mountains and what

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we can learn from them.

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Now let’s dive in.

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[On video call] Hi, Katie.

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Thank you so much
for joining me.

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Ives: Oh, thanks so
much for inviting me.

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It’s wonderful to be here
and wonderful to get a

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chance to talk with you.

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Sadoyan: Thank you.

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So in this week’s episode,
we explored a painting of

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a mountain and practiced a
mountain meditation, and I

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wanted to dive a little bit
deeper into the significance

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of mountains with you.

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But to start, why do you think
some people, myself included,

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see a mountain and just
feel this urge to climb it?

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Ives: I think it’s a really
common urge, and I think it’s

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there just, like, among people
who are climbers and also among

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people who aren’t climbers.

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Um, in cultures around the
world, mountains have long

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symbolized thresholds between
the Earth and the heavens,

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and they’ve been seen as a
way to approach the divine,

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however that’s understood.

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And I think a lot of that early
religious significance has

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persisted even in more secular
literature, this idea of…

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This idea of ascent as being
something that’s psychological,

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emotional, and potentially
spiritual, as well as physical.

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Um, the idea of mountains as a
symbol of human aspiration, as a

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symbol of desire for connection
with something larger than

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the self, um, and of ascent
itself as a form of longing.

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Like, you see a mountain,
you long to climb it, and

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climbing then becomes an
enactment of that longing.

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Sadoyan: Mm-hmm.

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Yeah, there’s a real powerful
metaphor of the mountain there.

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Ives: Yeah.

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Doug Robinson, who’s a rock
climber, um, often described

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the feeling of ascent as
that of sort of pursuing

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the, what he called the
elusive essential feeling.

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And I always love that term
because it’s–it’s something that

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people have struggled to put
into words, that climbers have

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struggled to put into words,
that lovers of mountains have

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struggled to put into words.

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There’s just—there’s
something that’s elusive and

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essential about mountains.

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Sadoyan: Definitely.

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Um, so actually I would love
to hear about your personal

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connection and personal
experiences with mountains

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and their emotional resonance.

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Why do you head to the
mountains and what do you hope

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to accomplish in doing so?

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Ives: Well, ever since I was
a child, um, long before I

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even knew about climbing, I
used to have vivid recurring

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dreams of mountains.

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And at some point in my
childhood, it became a dream

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of a very specific mountain.

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I grew up in the lowlands of
Eastern Massachusetts, and the

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only remnants–that are–remain of
the ancient mountains are… you

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see striations in the rock of
glaciers that retreated during

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the Ice Age, or you see hollows
in the landscape or hills that

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are called drumlins that are…
All of these are remnants of

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ancient alpine landscapes.

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So I think I was haunted
in a way, both, you know,

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sort of visually and
emotionally by the absence

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of mountains, um, around me.

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And so I started dreaming
about a mountain that

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rose in my backyard.

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And I grew up in Lincoln,
Massachusetts near the

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border with Concord.

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So I was… and in my dream,
the landscapes of low hills

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and farmlands and hemlock
trees and maples and oaks

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would sort of burst open and
these–this mountain would

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arise from the earth, and
there would be rock, a rocky

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ridge, and then there would be
snow and clouds on top of it.

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What astonished me was many
years later, I found out that

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Henry David Thoreau, who back in
the 19th century lived about two

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miles away from my house, um,
had a very similar dream about

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a mountain that he saw arising
east of Concord, which would

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place it near where I lived.
[laughs] 

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And to him, it was
this symbol of aspiration, of

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some perfect state of being
that he had not yet attained,

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and he would climb it again
and again in his sleep.

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Um, and he has this wonderful
line near the end of his

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description of this in his
journals where he says—he talks

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about dreams as being real.

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And, you know, and I think
that that’s—In a way, so the

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mountains become symbolic of
that because they are, you

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know, what we experience when
we experience a mountain,

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it’s not just the physical
space as people like Robin

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MacFarlane have described.

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It’s also the many layers of
human dreams associated with

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mountains, and those are very
real even if that reality is a

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largely, you know, internal one.

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Sadoyan: Mm-hmm.

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Yeah, and to your point
about dreams becoming real

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or being real, what about the
tangible physical experience

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of climbing or scaling a
mountain, feeling into those

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uneven surfaces, uh, with your
feet or the temperature and

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the texture of the rocks in
your palms, of course all the

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sounds in the environment.

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Um, can you speak to that
a little bit more, and how

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does one…how does someone
become one with a mountain?

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Ives: Yeah.

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All of that was what drew
me deeper into climbing

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when I was in grad school.

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Um, I was getting my MFA in
Fiction at the University of

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Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and I
knew that I wanted to write.

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I didn’t really know what
I wanted to write about,

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and it was around the same
time that I was really

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getting more serious about
learning how to rock climb.

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Climbing is an incredibly
visual, tactile,

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auditory experience.

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Engages all the five senses.

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[Sadoyan: Mm-hmm.] And there’s
a heightened awareness to

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detail when you climb because
for very practical reasons

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[laughs] you know you need to
be able to notice the small

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indentations in the rock or
the, you know, or if you’re

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ice climbing, the textures
and colors of the ice to know

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what will hold your weight.

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You know, how can you
find a pathway up this

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vertical cliff that’s safe?

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And uh, there’s a Scottish
poet named David Craig who

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put this, I thought, very
beautifully that for writers

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who climb that cliffs are

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seed beds for creative
expression because you are very

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close to the kinds of details
that you’ll be writing about.

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And yeah, all those aspects
that you talked about, all of

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that can then enters into your
work is… Another thing that

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writers, climbing writers, often
talk about is that climbing

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itself creates a heightened
sense of perception, that

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details appear more crisp,
more sharp, more radiant,

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um, you know, suffused with
their necessary existence

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for survival, but also with a
sense of beauty and connection.

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And I think for me and a lot
of other climbers, there’s a

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sense of when you’re climbing
and when you’re engaging with

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the rock, with the ice, with
the snow, with the mountain,

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with all your five senses,
that you are in fact weaving

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yourself into the cosmos that
this mountain [Sadoyan: Mm-hmm.]

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and its surroundings represent,
that you feel physically and

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emotionally and potentially
spiritually part of this,

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um, of larger communities
and ecosystems of being.

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You know, whether that’s the,
the rock, that’s the stone,

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the snow, you know, the trees
around you, the birds above you.

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Um, you know, a quartz crystal
that you reach for in order

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to keep yourself from falling.

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[Sadoyan: Yeah.] You know a
deep shade of blue ice that

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gives you the confidence
that it will hold your ax.

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The particular sound that an
ax makes when solid ice that

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tells you that you’re safe.

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Um, you know, all of
that becomes a necessary

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part of your being.

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Um, and there’s a sense
of—another thing that climbing

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writers often talk about is
a sense of the boundaries

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between self and surroundings
fading and really feeling

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part of the mountain.

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
the psychologist of “Flow”,

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was also a climber, and that
was an experience that he

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talked about, a sense of
kinship developing between

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the climber and the rock.

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Um, a sense of sort of fading
of boundaries between them.

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And then Nan Shepherd, Scottish
author who wrote a famous book

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called The Living Mountain,
her entire idea of ascent was

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not to climb any one peak,
but rather to experience the

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totality of the mountain, which
was the… You know, it was a

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form of climbing that could be
infinite, because the more that

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she knew about the mountain,
the more that there was to know.

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[Sadoyan: Mmm.] And her
goal was to sharpen all of

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her senses until she felt
as if she’d entered into the

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totality of the mountain’s life.

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Sadoyan: Mmm.

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So it sounds like on the one
hand, it’s a very mindful

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activity, obviously, because
your survival depends on it.

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And on the other hand, the
mindfulness component comes

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in when you really get
to know, um, the mountain

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through your experience
of, through your sensory

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perception and awareness of it.

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So it becomes a very specific,
uh, kind of knowledge that

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you carry in your body.

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And yet what I find so
intriguing is that you’ve

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written that there is really no
real definition of mountains.

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[laughs] So how do you
even find a mountain?

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And can you please
speak to why they are

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unknowable in many ways?

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Ives: Yeah, to get back to
Thoreau, um, in his journal

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description of his dream of
the, the mountain of Concord,

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he talks about, like at some
point in his dream, he writes

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he crossed this sort of
invisible line that divides

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a hill, mere earth heaped up,
as he says, from a mountain.

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And the mountain itself
is something—it’s

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something transcendent.

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It’s something that’s
beyond just a hill.

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But he, you know, it’s
not—at the same time, it’s

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not fully describable.

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And I think one thing that
was really interesting to

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me when I was researching my
book on imaginary mountains,

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um, I set out to find out
what the definition of a real

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mountain was, and I discovered
that there is no universal,

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commonly agreed-upon definition
of a mountain that is true

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for all regions of the world.

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People, geographers will
have different ideas about

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altitude, about prominence,
about auto- um, how

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autonomous a land form it is.

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They’ll have different
opinions about how steep it

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has to be to be a mountain.

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And I think I decided that
my favorite definition of a

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mountain is one from Roderick
Peattie, an American geographer

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in 1936, where he says,
“A mountain is a mountain

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because of the part it plays
in the popular imagination.”

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And he goes on to say that,
“A mountain enters into the

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imaginations of the people
who live within its shadows.”

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So that means that you have
things like, you know, there's

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a hill in my hometown that’s—I
think it’s 280 feet, and it’s

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called Mount Misery, because
of the role that it has played

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in the imagination at the time.

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It has persisted as a mountain
on a map even though, you

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know, you’d look at it
today and it would barely

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even register as a hill.

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Sadoyan: Hmm.

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Ives: You know, conversely,
you have 10,000-foot hills

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in Nepal that are just
called hills, not mountains.

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[Sadoyan: Hmm.] So, yeah,
it becomes a, it’s a

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very cultural definition.

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Sadoyan: Mm-hmm.

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And so why do you think so many
people, including yourself,

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want to get so close to this
unknowable, ineffable thing?

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Ives: Well, I think it’s,
I mean, I think it’s an—a

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natural human desire.

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Um, and I think what’s
interesting when you look at

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the history of mountaineering
literature, there’s so

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much devoted to, you
know, why do people climb?

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And I think, you know, it’d
be easy for somebody to say

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like, you know, it’s because
like, you know, why do people

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wanna brave these hardships
or put themselves through

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suffering or experience risk?

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But I think it’s more a part
of the fact that readers

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are trying to understand
themselves, you know, whether

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or not they’re climbers.

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You know, why does
this longing exist?

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Why do we want something
beyond the horizons?

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Why do we want something that
we see in the distance that

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we need to rise upward to?

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You know that it's deeply
embedded, I think, in

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human consciousness.

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And of course it means something
different to different people.

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I think if mountains become
symbols of aspiration, to

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one person that might mean
something very different

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from somebody else.

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You know, one person might
look at a mountain and

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have dreams of conquest.

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Another person might look
at it and think of it more

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in terms of veneration
and communion with nature.

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Sadoyan: Mm-hmm.

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Yeah.

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And you spoke about
the role of imagination

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in mountain climbing.

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I’m wondering too, what about
the historical imagination

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of the 18th century, which
is when Bidauld, the artist,

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painted, uh, the mountain
painting that we’ve discussed.

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Ives: Yeah.

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So I think that’s what’s
really interesting is, of

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course, you know, the first
ascent of Mont Blanc was in

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1786, which is around the
same time of the painting.

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And, um, a lot of people see
that as… Some people will

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pick that as the so-called
beginning of mountaineering.

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You know it, of course,
was not the beginning of

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people climbing mountains.

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People have climbed mountains
as long as human beings have

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existed around the world for,
for many different reasons.

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Um, but there was a sort
of particular attitude that

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arose around the time of
the ascent of Mont Blanc.

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Uh, and Peter Hansen talks
about this in his book, Summits

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of Modern Man, that after the
climb, one of the things—there

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was this big controversy about
who got there first, and he

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sees that sort of argument of
who’s first as part of what

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he calls a kind of summit
position of modernity and, uh,

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modern mountaineering, this
idea that a sort of wanting to

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kind of dominate the mountain,
of being there alone, of being

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there before anybody else.

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Which is very different from
other ideas about mountains

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in which, you know, reaching
the summit isn’t as important.

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It’s about more experiencing
the landscape, or maybe

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it’s about studying the, the
plants and wildlife there,

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or maybe it’s about hunting
or prospecting for crystals,

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or maybe it’s about trying to
become close to God as a, as

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a pilgrim, or having adventure
or seeing a beautiful view.

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But none of that necessarily
means, you know, recording

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oneself as the very
first ascensionist.

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So there’s this, there’s
this tension, uh, that arises

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and, you know, again, around
surrounding Mont Blanc.

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It was around the time
that people were becoming

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very fixated on the
elevations of mountains.

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And during the first
ascent of Mont Blanc,

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they brought a barometer
and tried to measure it.

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Um, later on, Saussure went
back and brought a whole

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huge number of scientific
equipments and measured all

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kinds of things, including
the blueness of the sky.

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[Sadoyan: Hmm.] And so there
was this beginning, you

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know, this idea of wanting to
quantify mountains, of wanting

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to categorize them, of wanting
to determine their elevations,

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put them on maps, versus
other ideas about mountains

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that are more about mountains
as something immeasurable,

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as something unquantifiable,
um, as something that exceeds

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human ability to understand.

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And this is something
that Veronica della Dora

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talks about in her book.

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She talks about this tension
as being fundamental towards

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people’s understandings of
mountains, and I think it’s also

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fundamental to our interactions
with, um, the natural world.

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You know, this idea, you know,
is it something that people can

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measure, calculate, conquer, or
is it something beyond—beyond

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human understanding, something
that has a life of its own,

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um, that exceeds our particular
ways of comprehending the

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world, that exceeds calculation.

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You know, that has more
to do with dreams and

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intuition and also with its
own existence as, you know,

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something that’s potentially
sentient in its own right in

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some religious traditions.

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Sadoyan: Mm-hmm.

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Wow.

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Well, you’ve certainly given
me so much to think about next

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time I go on a hike, and I’m
really grateful for that, Katie.

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Thank you so much for
joining me on this episode.

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Ives: Oh, thank you.

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[Theme music begins]

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Sadoyan: To find the related
meditation and see images,

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00:18:23,489 --> 00:18:26,929
transcripts, and additional
resources, visit our website

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00:18:26,969 --> 00:18:28,969
at getty dot edu slash ommm.

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That’s O-M-M-M.

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[Music fades out]