“What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees.”

-René Daumal, French author and poet, 1908-1944.

This quote is from René Daumal’s 1952 unfinished work Mount Analogue, an adventure novel about an expedition to a fictional mountain. It’s part of a longer passage, which follows:

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.

This quote encapsulates much of what makes mountaineering unique. Time spent in the mountains stays with you, and the knowledge gained above seeps into life below. Daumal elegantly explains this and gives a window into achieving verticality, and how it stays with you long after the experience.

Quote taken from: Daumel, René. Mount Analogue. Baltimore: Penguin, 1974.