L'euforia delle cime

Year: 2008 Pages: 96 A hymn to the effort and spirit of the team. A contagious love for the wild beauty of mountain landscapes. With references to mythical routes, from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas, from the Dolomites to the Caucasus. A reflection on risk and self-discovery. Why go to the top when you can settle for the pace? Why look for the most direct, most difficult, most challenging itineraries? Why face danger, cold, discomfort, suffering, when the beaten paths offer a peaceful discovery of the mountains? The spirit of mountaineering is not that of the aseptic surrogates that modern society offers in place of and in exchange for the Alpine adventure. At the basis of this passion, the mysterious need to overcome oneself, to confront an immense nature that welcomes and dominates, without the desire for conquest ever undermining its purity. It is this mystique of useless effort that this work deals with. It attempts a phenomenology of an activity rooted in the Western tradition of overcoming oneself, leading to an experience that transcends all those that ordinary life reserves: the euphoria of the peaks, the most beautiful of rewards.