The Light in Our Sky Series #2
A quote from Henry David Thoreau
The Light in Our Sky
Volume #2
December 17th, 2024
“On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning.” Henry David Thoreau (American essayist 1817-1862), from an early version of Walden.
The peak of Salkantay, where Zanny trekked last month.
ZAN: Since I was a teenager I’ve kept a journal full of favorite quotes I’ve stumbled across while reading, and this one came to mind recently when I was in Peru. I’d arrived in Cusco at night, and woke up the next morning feeling dizzy from altitude sickness (the city sits at 11,152 feet), nervous about the trek I was going to start in a few days, and exhausted from five weeks of travel and two work conferences. But after I’d walked out of my room and huffed and puffed my way up the set of stairs to my hotel’s breakfast area, I turned around and saw mountains in every direction that were dotted with shadows from the clouds drawn in around the city, and suddenly I could feel nothing but a surge of promise for the future. That’s when this quote popped into my head.
A few days later, when I woke up in the middle of the Andes and unzipped my tent to see craggy, snow-dusted peaks, I felt that same sense of optimism. There’s something about being surrounded by mountains so enormous as to be instantly humbling that feels encouraging. Like recognizing that there is a wisdom in nature that exists beyond my own human thoughts and concerns, that will outlast my lifetime and those of my descendants. To me, that’s comforting.
PA: Monasteries are often set in places of high altitude and/or great beauty. I think there’s a reason for that.
What strikes me about this quote are the words “hopeful souls.” There are various ways to divide humanity into two groups (lately I’ve been thinking about people who show empathy vs. people who seem incapable of it), and one of those dividing lines is hopeful v. hopeless souls. I’m in the former category, and I sometimes wonder why that is. Some of it surely has to do with the fact that, while I’ve had my fair share of troubles, hope hasn’t been beaten out of me by poverty, trauma, or terrible mental or physical illness. But I know people who seem to be hopeless by nature, despite pretty good external circumstances. They could be on top of a mountain in the Andes, looking out over spectacular scenery, and still feel deep friendships are doomed or impossible, war is imminent, misery everywhere, that life is just a long parade of disappointments that lead to the lights going out. I wonder how those divergent attitudes are formed in a human brain.
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Zanny and Roland,
I was drawn to two moments in your reflections. One was your observation, Zanny, of how mountains exude a "humbling" effect that's "encouraging," the suggestion of "a wisdom in nature that exists beyond my own human thoughts and concerns, that will outlast my lifetime and those of my descendants. To me, that's comforting." The other was your observation, Roland, of the significance of the phrase "hopeful souls" and how it suggests a distinction between the hopeful and the hopeless in our world.
There's a way these moments converge for me, oriented about faith, grace, humility, and redemption. The quote (“On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning.") is classic Thoreau, expressing with metaphoric flourish his Transcendental view of nature as humanity's only hope for salvation. If God created nature and humanity in his perfect image, and if humanity has lost its faith, fallen from grace, and abandoned divine perfection, then humanity's only path to salvation is to embrace nature, which is all that remains of perfection.
Converge the moments of your exchange, and Thoreau's quote can be read as expressing this Transcendental paradigm. Hopeful souls are actually faithful souls, who once lost their faith, fell from grace, and abandoned divine perfection, but who now seek redemption and salvation as an act of faith, the restoration of divine perfection, humbly from a divine presence greater than their own. In such an encouraging pursuit, it could only be morning on the tops of the mountains that humble and comfort us, as it could only be morning everywhere for those who pursue. Vintage Thoreau, if read from this eco-theological perspective, one of many possible interpretations.
--Bob
"Like recognizing that there is a wisdom in nature that exists beyond my own human thoughts and concerns, that will outlast my lifetime and those of my descendants. To me, that's comforting." 😦😍😍