Mark Jenkins's Blog

In the previous newsletter I briefly explored why mountains capture our imagination and touched upon some of the mythology and religious significance of these vertical environs.  In this edition I’ll delve into one mountain steeped in the Hindu pantheon: Nanda Devi.

Located in the Garhwal range in the Himalaya, Nanda Devi is India’s highest peak and, at 25,643 feet (7816 m), is the world’s 23rd tallest peak. It is a sanctuary and home to the deity Nanda Devi (“bliss-giving goddess” in Sanskrit).

In legend, Nanda was a beautiful princess who was not interested in the amorous pursuits of a neighboring prince — nor was her father the king. The prince became enraged by Nanda’s rebuff and took his revenge by invading their land and defeating the king. He searched for the princess, intending to take her by force but Nanda fled, climbed the peak and merged with the mountain. She was deified and is known to be an angry goddess when threatened or offended. Events in the region often begin with a prayer or offering and there are multiple shrines dedicated to Nanda Devi.

The majestic peak has also attracted mountaineers and in 1976, it was the location of a tragedy.

In 1934, after a half-century of cumulative explorations, a team of British climbers (Eric Shipton and H. W. Tilman) finally discovered a route through the treacherous Rishi gorge and were able to access the inner ring, known as the Sanctuary, surrounding the two-peaked massif. In 1936 a British-American expedition (Noel Odell and H.W. Tilman) reached the summit. At that point in time it was the highest summit ever achieved; and remained that way until 1950, when Annapurna was successfully climbed (Mount Everest, the world’s highest, was first summited in 1953).

In 1947, Willi Unsoeld, a twenty-one-year-old penniless wandering American mountaineer saw Nanda Devi from an adjacent valley and was so captured by the beauty that he vowed on the spot to find a wife; have a daughter and name her Nanda Devi. And in 1954, he and his wife Jolene welcomed Nanda Devi Unsoeld (‘Devi’) into their lives.

Willi kept climbing. In 1963 he was part of a Mount Everest expedition in which he and Thomas Hornbein achieved a first ascent via the extremely difficult west ridge. Forced to bivouac at over 26,000 feet they came down the south route, frostbitten and exhausted. Although he nearly died and lost nine toes to frostbite, Willi’s passion for high-risk adventures was undiminished.

In 1976, Willi Unsoeld and his daughter Devi were part of a thirteen-member expedition to climb a new and difficult route on her namesake. As a 22-year-old mountaineer it was the trip of a lifetime.

Before the party arrived at the mountain, however, there were fractious disagreements about gear, the route, and even toilet paper. Once they set foot on the mountain, and faced the stresses of the steep terrain, avalanches, and storms, these party fissures deepened.

The early days of climbing witnessed several near catastrophes from avalanche and rockfall.  Intense arguments flared as personalities and egos clashed. After a month of difficult climbing and building successively higher camps on extremely steep terrain, they’d succeeded in setting up camp four, some 24,000 feet above sea level. The first summit team of four climbers made the summit and came back to camp four jubilant.

The first summit team descended to camp three; and the second summit team, which included Devi, climbed up to camp four.

Devi, who had been ill with dysentery, became exhausted. For almost a week, a storm pinned them down; Devi worsened and began hemorrhaging into her gastrointestinal tract. Despite the storm they decided to get her down to camp three. As they were preparing to go she suddenly said, “I am going to die.”

She collapsed.

Willi performed CPR, but Devi passed.

Three years later, Willi was leading a group of undergraduates on a winter climb on Mt. Rainier, when he and a student were killed in an avalanche.

—

This tragic tale of father and daughter is detailed in the book Fatal Mountaineer by Robert Roper.

The post Nanda Devi: Mountain, Mythology and Tragedy appeared first on Mark Jenkins.

Mountains have long captured our imagination. For early civilizations, mountains offered protection from enemy attacks; their inhospitable environments kept danger at bay and allowed for peaceful areas of respite in valleys for countless villagers. As looming fierce protectors, mountains became the mythical homes to gods and spirits. But much like fire, the power to safeguard was also the power to destroy. It’s not difficult to imagine ancient humans grasping with the terrible natural forces they encountered — avalanches, hurricane strength winds, and brutal cold — and creating mythology and lore to explain these beautiful but deadly environments.

To the Ancient Greeks, the summit of Mount Olympus was the home of the twelve Olympians (the deities of the pantheon) including Zeus, the king of the gods. To the Romans, Mount Etna was where the god Vulcan kept his fiery blacksmith’s forge.

Farther to the east, mountains were viewed as holy places. In Buddhism, Mount Meru (Sumeru in Sanskrit) is the center of the physical and spiritual universe. Now known as Mount Kailash, this 21,778 ft (6,638 m) peak in the Tibet Autonomous Region is sacred to four religions (Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and Bon) and is the site for pilgrimages that have been occurring for several millennia. Climbing this mountain is forbidden.

The Buddhist monk FaXian (~350 CE) travelled from China to northern India in search of Buddhist scriptures. He and his companions had to traverse the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram, and the Himalayas. His writings share that he believed these places contained terrible dragons capable of spewing snow, wind, and stones: “Of those that encounter these dangers, not one in ten thousand escapes.”

In the 18th and 19th centuries, mountains became a scientific curiosity, something to be mapped, measured, and explored. K2 (28,250 ft / 8610 m) the second highest mountain on Earth, got its name from the British Great Trigonometrical Survey, which began in 1802. Surveying the mountains in the Karakoram, they simply labelled them K1, K2, K3, etc. Since no one else had named it and no religions claimed it, the name K2 stuck.

Inquisitiveness, of course, led to climbing and mountains became a symbol of conquest. Mountains fueled imaginations, sparked ingenuity (crampons, ice screws, and high-altitude oxygen rigs, etc.) and provided a crucible for storytelling that continues unabashed today. In both fiction and non-fiction alike, the struggles of person vs nature, person vs supernatural, and even person vs person play out in survivalist dramas that stimulate our minds. Mountaineering triumphs and tragedies abound in prose, poem, and film.

The British mountaineer George Mallory, who died climbing Mount Everest in 1924 along with Sandy Irvine, was once asked by a reporter, “Why climb Everest?”

Mallory’s short reply was, “Because it’s there.”

Many are familiar with this quote, but here’s his follow-up explanation: “Everest is the highest mountain in the world, and no man has reached its summit. Its existence is a challenge. The answer is instinctive, a part, I suppose, of man’s desire to conquer the universe.”

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The concept of Fate vs Free Will is a mystery that has pulled at human imagination for millennia. Philosophers and theologians have wrestled with trying to prove one or the other, and more recently psychologists, neuroscientists, and physicists have jumped into the fray as well. At the root of the conflict of Fate vs Free Will is the question: are we agents free to choose our path, or are things predetermined.

This literary conflict is seen in works such as Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, and Macbeth by Shakespeare — and of course, many more since. (Other ways that this theme may be expressed include Person vs. God, Person vs. Destiny, and Person vs. Supernatural.)

I’m exploring this theme in my yet unnamed work-in-progress and have discovered some interesting facets of this unsettled (and unsettling) mystery. Most humans believe that we possess the power and the will to make our own decisions. Religions, societies, and laws are all built around this assumption. For example, if one is forced to commit a crime through coercion by another (e.g., threat of violence) then society views this differently than if one had committed this same crime via their own free will.

But what if free will doesn’t really exist, and we are simply living within the illusion of free will? Perhaps the choices you make today were already decided, even before you were born? How is this possible?

Though it may be tempting to think of this debate as being purely philosophical, there is disagreement within the world of theoretical physics, where it is referred to as determinism vs. indeterminism.

Einstein believed that everything in the universe was driven by cause and effect. In the determinist perspective, everything from the Big Bang onward was set in motion 13 billion years ago, and everything follows the laws of physics even if we don’t understand them all (e.g., Einstein’s unfulfilled goal of uncovering a Unified Field Theory to mathematically explain gravity, electromagnetism, and strong and weak nuclear forces). In the determinist realm, even of our small everyday actions — like choosing which socks to wear every morning — have been predetermined because the atoms in the human brain were once at the core of the Big Bang.

The flip side of the coin, indeterminism, emerged through the understanding of quantum mechanics. Scientists, such as Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, uncovered the strange and counterintuitive behavior of subatomic systems where things just happened. For example, an experiment might yield two completely different, and mutually exclusive, outcomes in a 50:50 distribution with no rhyme or reason as to why these different outcomes happened. To indeterminists like Bohr, quantum mechanics doesn’t try to explain the why and the outcomes are probabilistic because that is just what they are.

This ruffled Einstein and led him to quip, “God does not play dice with the Universe.” He thought that there must be another layer, deeper than quantum mechanics, where physical laws could explain what was observed in subatomic systems.

To this day, the conflict between indeterminism, which allows for free will, and determinism, which does not, has not been resolved. Of course, neither has the philosophical debate.

The post Fate vs. Free Will appeared first on Mark Jenkins.

Although it might at first appear counter-intuitive, bursts in productivity and plowing through obstacles, such as writer’s block, are often found in work outside the creative sphere. Regularly stepping away from a project and making room for physical exertion is not only good advice from a balance perspective, but extremely important for overall health and — here’s the added bonus — critical for creative problem solving.

The health benefits of regular exercise are well understood. Examples include, improved immune function, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and some types of cancers, and mental health benefits such attenuation in anxiety/depression and improved sense of well-being. These examples are but the tip of the iceberg and the positive health effects of exercise is a topic I’ve studied for decades. I’ll write more in subsequent blogs but for now I want to focus on the creative problem-solving benefits of regular exercise.

Consider the following anecdote:

I just couldn’t figure out where to take the story next. Frustrated, I gave up, shut down the computer, and went on a trail run. Breathing hard, I pushed the pace, trying not to trip on the roots and the slick spots. The run was so consuming, I could think of nothing else besides the cadence and the next bend in the trail. When I finished and warmed down, the solution to my conundrum hit me like a brick — and it was brilliant.

I’ve definitely had this happen to me, and I’m not alone. During my professional career as a physician, I’ve spoken with hundreds of people who’ve shared similar experiences. People in vastly different careers, with vastly different problems, from neurosurgeons to musicians (who are about as far apart of the creative spectrum as you can get).

It’s not a trick. It’s something our brains are hardwired to do. The only secret is to allow it to happen by placing yourself to take advantage of it.

And that means making exercise a regular part of your routine. This task has become more challenging in the current COVID-environment, but fortunately the type of exercise doesn’t seem to matter, it just needs to be intense enough to get one’s heart rate up and clear the mind. Writers, programmers, musicians, scientists, and artists can all benefit from this regular investment in creativity and health.

So get out there, and let those subconscious sub-processors work their magic. Enjoy the creative burst; you’ve earned it.

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