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Heels 1974

No Excuses

No Excuses

To tramp or climb for a concrete or materialistic reason is false since neither bush nor mountain can offer a material reward to any individual and still maintain its fullness and beauty.

Each person has a motive however, though few can say what it is. Peace, tranquillity and beauty may play a large role in most people's answers to the question, "Why do you do it?", and indeed, the search for perfection in life and peace of mind do play an important part in a conscious driving force. But to me at least, the times spent in thought or admiration of nature are the times when all explanation is made useless; it is a personal experience in the soul of the individual and needs no justification or explanation, even if it were possible.

To climb a peak or to get from A to B in so many minutes is of secondary importance but it is this that shows as the reason for climbing and tramping and is taken as such by the public, apart from a few who say we do it "because it's there". But they are usually the cynics. Let them suffer in ignorance.