The Ascension

What’s your approach to climbing Rainier? Longmire’s? Or from the east?

I do not have an approach, I have never had an approach. I do not climb mountains empirically, for ego, for western achievement, for claiming beauty.

My appreciation of beauty involves distance and non-interference. I do not conquer anything by scrambling over it.

My mountains are inward, they are not goals in themselves. I do not outfit myself with anything other than patience, wisdom, and a desire to leave things as I have found them.

I do not litter the achievement I strive for. I accept local custom names, I do not name wilderness features or areas after urban creatures. To my summits, there are no footsteps before or after mine.

More to the point, my thrill seeking is not in possibilities of death or injury, but in inquiry and learning. I defy death by living, not in flaunting danger or ignoring right thinking.

My boundaries are as much in thoughts and behaviors as in geography and geological features. My maps are drawn up by culture, custom, tribe, family, and myself.

Most of all, I do not take only photos and leave only footprints, I take only breaths and leave only shadows.

Arthur Tulee 1998