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Travel Notes and Some Pictures, Chamonix - Mont Blanc

Travel Notes and Some Pictures, Chamonix - Mont Blanc


Postby Joehill » Fri Aug 18, 2017 8:42 pm

Date walked: 05/08/2017

Distance: 109 km

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Mont Blanc from Lac Noir
cairn.jpg


The great dreams (the adventures) are always in the elusive distance,
and to reach for them is only to get lost.
For the wanderer, only what is clear in sight matters.
He only follows tiny piles of shattered rocks along the way.
These are the cairns, built by helpful and kind souls,
and what leads him further than dreams.

Foggy Day on the Slopes
Untitled-2.jpg


The sheep stick close together, but if they stray aside, the dogs are there to stop them. The two dogs methodically work, running back and forth between the Shepard and his herd, either to keep the sheep in order or to get commands from their master. The Shepard do very little, he looks over the herd and now and then give his dogs short instructions. And what is above them all is an endless sky.

The Melting Mer de Glace
IMG-0634.jpg


We cry for change and change is coming. We cry for things not to change and change is here… It is natural for things to come into and out of existence, for things to live and die, appear and disappear. It is natural for things to change.
So why not love what we have lost, as much as we love what we got? Why not love to lose as much as we love to gain? Why not be contempt with change, and let it has its course.

Because it hurts to lose what we love, and it is difficult to understand that love is not lost in lost.

Chamonix, Mont Blanc, and the River Arve
IMG-0710-1.jpg


So we build things that last, and we let our ideas and dreams pass through the ages in arts and crafts – In formed structures of metal, glass and rock.

On the street of the cities we build, there are signs where we can read the names of what is most important to us, and we learn the names of what we want and need. Society has become our teacher in human will..

The mountain is a different kind of teacher, because on the hills there are no written signs, and we instead learn what is. It teaches us no names, and still from these teachings we know ever better what we want.

Up on the Mont Blanc Massive
love.jpg


Sometimes you just have to go for it, whether it hurts or not. It is like being swept away by a great force that has its origin from both within and without. I think I’m talking about some type of primal Will that makes us act and do things whether we question it or not.

Weak and tiered, the peaks are in front of me now, and still I never felt stronger… It is like falling in love, and to feel the last bit of resistance fading – to fail rationality, to fail independence, and to fail individuality, and to still feel good about it all.

The travels were always about this; about submitting to a Will that wants to be free, wants to find love, and that refuses to be contained. A Will that drags you around, makes you try, and makes you go for it. The air was thin, and I could barely breathe, but I took a deep breath, and I went higher.

The pain was always connected to this; it was to go too fast, too far, and fall.. I was in a rush to reach you, as I was in a rush to reach other summits, and pain was always becouse I was falling… in love… or off a cliff…

I touched white snow, and the air was clear and cold. I had never gone higher than this before, and now there were only glaciers and pointy peaks between me and where the blue heaven starts. There was nothing else to do but to fall down on my knees, let the backpack fall to the ground, and fall in love with it all...
Last edited by Joehill on Fri Sep 01, 2017 11:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
Joehill
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Re: Travel Notes and Some Pictures, Chamonix - Mont Blanc

Postby dav2930 » Fri Aug 25, 2017 7:11 pm

Some nice photos. More a prose-poem than a report, I guess, but interesting. Was it the TMB you were doing?

Joehill wrote:It is like being swept away by a great force that has its origin from both within and without. I think I’m talking about some type of primal Will that makes us act and do things...

Very Schopenhauer. Have you read The World as Will and Representation by any chance? :think:
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Re: Travel Notes and Some Pictures, Chamonix - Mont Blanc

Postby Joehill » Fri Aug 25, 2017 9:23 pm

dav2930 wrote:Some nice photos. More a prose-poem than a report, I guess, but interesting. Was it the TMB you were doing?

Joehill wrote:It is like being swept away by a great force that has its origin from both within and without. I think I’m talking about some type of primal Will that makes us act and do things...

Very Schopenhauer. Have you read The World as Will and Representation by any chance? :think:


Thanks, yeah I know its not really a report, for my own sake i like to put the "observations" in this blog thou.. I went there for a week to find out how it would be to walk in the alps after a year of walking here in scotland! So I went on different routes in the chamonix area, but not the whole TMB.. now i know what is needed for that, and for makining it up mont blanc... a lot of crampon training on the munros this winter to start with :lol:

Yes i went down the line of reading kant and schopenhauer some years back, and it interest me a lot to explore our human will.. Funny enough this exploration seems to lead far beyond "human will" itself, and a bit suprisingly it also seems like the mountains and nature is giving me a lot of insight! More so than most books!
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