Without relenting in angle, it dropped some 600 feet to a small glacier which arced off the bottom of the face. I spent evenings with them in their tents, thawing pemmican hoosh over a seal-blubber stove as the wind skirled outside.

Combining accounts of legendary mountain ascents with vivid descriptions of his own forays into wild, high landscapes, Robert McFarlane reveals how the mystery of the world’s highest places has came to grip the Western imagination—and perennially draws legions of adventurers up the most perilous slopes. Macfarlane adds his bit to the long lore of mountaineering, but his encounters with the peaks themselves have special presence and acuity. Scurvy ravaged the explorers as well, destabilizing the flesh so that it fell from bones like wet biscuit.Furthermore, we have started to develop an interest in what those who live in the mountains - previously viewed as inarticulate dunderheads - have to say about them. With a sharp report it struck the rock face once more, then took a lateral leap to my left, and whirred away past me. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. During the retreat, his feet and hands were wrapped and bagged in plastic to save them from further harm. They clumped together to make dark continents of shadow on the fabric, until the drifts became too heavy for the slope of the tent and slid with a soft hiss down to the ground.

I could see dozens of tiny meltwater lakes which had formed in the hollows between the billows, winking at me like shields in the sun. We'd have to climb out along its side, as we had done on the way up, with even less guarantee that the whole structure wouldn't collapse and send us plummeting down to the glacier. Extracted from Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination, by Robert Macfarlane, published by Granta. My grandfather had not tried to organize them and so very different books found themselves neighbours.Much of Macfarlane's terrain is well known and previously travelled, most recently in Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory. He conveys the enthusiast's passion for what is certainly in part an irrational pursuit convincingly, and while it (fortunately) may not be enough to get all readers to lace up their hiking boots and set out for the nearest base camp, it makes for a fine trip for the imagination in the comfort of one's own home. Clouds were hurtling over the summit, and for a moment it felt as though the mountain was toppling slowly on to me. Improving communications allowed more people to travel to mountain regions, as much out of curiosity as necessity.