Sunday Papers: Robert Macfarlane

"To reach a summit is very palpably to have triumphed over adversity: to have conquered something, albeit something utterly useless.  It is the imagined significance of the summit -- which is after all, nothing but a patch of rock or snow raised higher than any other by the contingencies of geology; a set of co-ordinates in space; a figment of geography; a point without a point -- which has largely given rise of the industry of ascent."


On the turntable:  Thelonious Monk:  Live at the It Club"
On the nighttable:  Robert Macfarlane, "Mountains of the Mind"