“[In the mountains], the highest parts of the loftiest peaks seem to be above the laws that rule our world below, as if they belonged to another sphere.”

-Conrad Gesner, Swiss physician and naturalist, 1516-1565.

The above quote comes from a letter Conrad Gesner wrote to his friend James Vogel in 1541. Gesner was a naturalist, and he had a passion for mountaineering. In the letter, he was advocating for the proper study of mountains and their environs, and he was lamenting those who didn’t share this belief. The rest of the passage follows:

Men dull in mind find no cause for wonder anywhere; they idly sit at home instead of going to see what is on view in the great theatre of the world. Therefore I declare that man to be an enemy of nature who does not esteem high mountains worthy of long study. Of a truth the highest parts of the loftiest peaks seem to be above the laws that rule our world below, as if they belonged to another sphere. Up there the action of the all-powerful sun is not the same, nor is that of the air or winds. There the snow is everlasting and this softest of substances that melts between our fingers cares nothing for the fierceness of the sun and its burning rays. So far is it from disappearing with the lapse of time that it passes into hardest ice and crystals that nothing can dissolve.[1]


[1]: Quoted from: Macfarlane, Robert. Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. 201-202. From the original source: Gesner, Conrad. On the Admiration of Mountains. Translated by H.B.D. Soulé. San Francisco: The Grabhorn Press, 1937.