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Show 47. in the book he carries or in a viewfinder? It is precisely because he is reading the wrong book, following someone else's interpretation, even forming his own perceptions not by what he enters, but by what he brings. He doesn't even try to see Nature in her own terms. So: the deep meaning of going light must penetrate the state of mind a mountaineer develops in the wilderness. What, we ask, must he leave behind? Muir may have gone into the Sierra alone, but did he seek solitude? Not entirely. Emerson, for instance, reminds us that "To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me." Perhaps, then, one can only go relatively light, and relatively solitary into the mountains. I can remember a weekend outing, at the age of sixteen. Lying in my sleeping bag at twelve thousand feet, I was altitude sick, lonely, and had lost my appetite. I had thought to follow Muir's methods, and only brought with me a loaf of rye bread and a bag of tea, but these provisions offered little comfort. The time weighed heavily on my mind. Only years later, after I had spent many summer weeks wandering in the Sierra, did I begin to understand Muir's austere methods. I began to sense the freedom of movement, the meaning of unencumbered travel I could achieve with a light pack and a light mind. Later when I began to climb seriously in Yosemite, my colleagues began to express a disdain for the new and profitable technology which was meeting the growing market |