Climbing to my mind finds its chief justification as an antidote for modern city life. One cannot sweat and worry simultaneously. The mountain resolv… - Alastair Borthwick

In time (though there was no such thing as time) the handhold gave way to another handhold, and another, and another. A pair of boots appeared level with my face. I pulled myself over the edge and sat panting. Murdo smiled at me, and automatically I smiled back. I turned, and looked over the edge. And then, and only then, did the gears re-engage and the world become the world again.

They crawled like flies over the face of the Cobbler; and it was not too fanciful to imagine that the mountain might sigh in its sleep, shake a rocky paw free of the heather blanket which surrounded it, and brush the insects off. To us, who had imagined mountain tops to be uninhabited deserts, it was surprising that there should be so much life in this twisted landscape of rock. Here was a society whose existence we had never suspected.

Above and beyond were mountains, scarcely touched by the tidemark of humanity at their bases, impervious to pipers and ice cream barrows or to the customers of either, as aloof and untouched as the desert which hems in the airport of Timbuctoo.