New Year's Greetings

Summoned by Yak Bells

An announcement that Canadians were down-loading the sound of cow bells to their cell phones has prompted me to revivify my yak bells. The Canadians were using the sound to support their contestants at the Vancouver Olympics. I needed the bells to celebrate the Tibetan New Year. The sound of the bells is forever associated in my mind with Nepal and the tinkling sound of passing yak trains.

Unfortunately my bells had been displaced from their customary place of honor after I noticed moth cocoons on the yak hair straps. Could the small moths that occasionally show up in my kitchen be the start of a Tibetan invasion? Could I be arrested by the enforcement brigade of the Department of Agriculture? In panic I sprayed the bells and their yak hair straps with insecticide and stored them in a plastic bag. But now the bells, have been released, shampooed, and called on to promote general happiness as we march forward into the Iron-Tiger Year.

February 15. The year began with the new moon of February 15. This year the start of the Tibetan lunar-solar calendar coincided with that of the Chinese and Vietnamese calendars. This might have been supposed to allow Tibetans and Chinese to celebrate together, but there has been little easing of tension in general. In Tibet monks and laypeople said prayers and threw tsampa in the air to mourn the killings of Tibetans in the 2008 protests that took place all over Tibet, accoding to a Tibetan web site based in south India. There is a further reason for tension. The Chinese takeover of Tibet began in 1959 when the Dalai Lama fled to India. The Tibetan calendar consists of a 60 year cycle. Five elements (Fire, Earth, Iron, Water, Wood) are coupled to the 12 zodiac animals (Hare, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, ape, Bird, Dog, Pig, Mouse, Bull, Tiger). The last Iron-Tiger year thus corresponds to the first full year of Chinese rule.

Jim Yardley in the New York Times reported on February 17 that the Chinese have been persuading Nepal to tighten its border with China and send back to China Tibetans who cross the border. Often they do so on their way to Dharamsala in India in search of an education or as a pilgrimage to visit the Dalai Lama. “Until 2008 roughly 2,500 to 3,000 Tibetans annually slipped across the border.” Last year it was down to 600. The Chinese have steadily worked for decades to establish Nepal as a client state and pry it away from Indian influence. Road building has been their major method of creating bonds, a technique that is reminiscent of the period of the Great Game.

DALAI LAMA in Dharamsala. Photo by Gaelen Hanson, 2009

February 18. Then came the low-key meeting in the White House between President Obama and the Dalai Lama. Let us pass over the stupidity of smuggling the Dalai Lama out the side door past the garbage bags. Pennance has been done: the Social Secretary has chosen to resign.

February 20. Nicholas Kristof in his New York Times Blog of Feb 20 has tried to explain why it was necessary for Obama to Meet the Dalai Lama and why Obama needs to explain to the Chinese people why they met. (The White House Blog was anything but forceful.)
“ The Dalai Lama is reviled by many ordinary Chinese, perhaps more so by the public than by the Chinese government, although this in part reflects propaganda critical of the Dalai Lama. The most important thing that needs to be conveyed is that it’s in China’s own interests that the world, China included, engage the Dalai Lama. China is making a catastrophically bad bet that after His Holiness dies, the Tibetan problem will be easier to solve. In fact, the reverse is true. The one thing most Tibetans agree on is their reverence for the Dalai Lama. If it weren’t for him, there would have been a much more violent resistance to Beijing, and Tibetans would have turned long ago to terrorism.” “A deal between China and the Dalai Lama is possible —… but it’s feasible only as long as the Dalai Lama is alive. Only he can make the tough compromises necessary, and deliver the Tibetan poeple behind him."

February 26. Reuters corresopondent Ben Blanchard, visiting a region of Tibet outside the most controlled area, reports that Tibetans and Han are ignoreing politics to build uneasy ties based on their common history that links Tibetans and Han Chinese to Buddhism. "Qinghai's Tibetans say they are given far more leeway to practice their religion than those living in what is formally called the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Pictures of the Dalai Lama are openly displayed at major temples in a way unthinkable in that region. At the lunar new year celebrations last week, monks at one monastery freely carried out a complex ceremony complete with ornate, embroidered silk costumes that culminated in the unfurling of a giant image of the Buddha on a nearby hillside. It attracted a small, though fascinated, crowd of Han Chinese tourists. One observer rmarked: "I think we can learn a lot from our Tibetan compatriots. They must be doing something right."

Himalayan Portfolios page 128
Monsoon Storm, Gyamtso La, Tibet, 2003. The pass is the highest point on the way from Lhasa to the Everest Base Camp and the watershed between the Arun and the Tsangpo rivers.
"The storm soon passed;
the Chinese overlordship of Tibet remains."


Dear Chinese & Tibetan friends, you are summoned by yak bells.

Kendal Mountain Book Festival 2009

BOARDMAN TASKER
"The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature commemorates the lives of Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker, who disappeared on the North East Ridge of Everest in 1982, and is given to the author, or co-authors of an original work which has made an outstanding contribution to mountain literature. "

This photograph, a detail from page 112, 0f Himalayan Portfolios, shows the ridge with the Everest summit to the right. The Pinnacles, where the climbers died, are the center point to the right of a jagged ridge section.

The award was announced on November 20 at the Kendal 2009 Mountain Book Festival. The Kendal Festival closely parallels the Banff Festival discussed last month. Kendal is a small market town that is a south-eastern gateway to the English Lake District and the last town before the M6 road to Scotland crosses Shap Fell.

Entering Himalayan Porfolios for a literary prize was something of a long shot. We would have to convice the judges that the book was an integral work of text and pictures and not pictures with some text attached. Mirrors, Messages and Manifestations by Minor White was conceived as such a unit with "sequences" matched to original text. The works of William Blake that combined poetry and engravings served as a model. The wonderful books by Paul Strand, Time in New England for example, would not qualify because he relied on others to provide a text. Hybrid works are a tricky catagory: Wagner's Ring cycle is a monster example in which a poetic text, music and staging were promoted as one. A phone call from my brother in England told me that my book had been noted as giving particular enjoyment in the award ceremony at Kendal.

The well structured and thoughtful addess by Phil Bartlett, the chair of the judges, has been posted on the web. A paragraph of 145 words was devoted to explaining why Himalayan Portfolios, though much enjoyed, did not qualify to be on the short list. The winner, Beyond the Mountain, an autobiography by Steve House, received 318 words. (He was also a winner at the Banff Festival, see my November 11 blog.) My book was judged to be "a sumptuous collection of black and white photography and serious supporting essays." (For some reason he did not metion the extended title: Journeys of the Imagination.) We did not convince, or manage to slip in without being caught, White House fashion, but we came close enough to be seriously considered. For the full text of the judge's remarks see Book Reviews on my web page or this link.

Kangchenjunga from Pangpema (HP page 126.) First ascent without oxygen by Boardman, Tasker and Doug Scott, 1978 (see also HP page 165).

Banff Mountain Book Festival-2

Finalist’s Report

This report is both sad and happy.

On the sad side the Mountain Image Award went to a super-massive book of color photographs of the Alps. They were taken from an ultra-light motor-glider flown by a Slovenian biologist and mountaineer Matevz Lenarcic (approximate transcription—the name copies as Matevc Lenar i ). The style of his photography is very unlike the austerity of Brad Washburn, the full page presentation of his photographs is totally different from our white-border formality, and his primary aim is environmental advocacy whereas my style might be called photographic introspection. In short, comparing his book and mine is almost impossible. The book is described as “a gesture on a grand scale”, “a mountain manifesto and a call to arms.”
Finalists.
Awards.

On the happy side I had a wonderful time listening to presentations and signing books. The presentations included Steve Winter’s account of photographing the snow leopard for National Geographic. A six month quest in several Himalayan regions, some familiar to me, yielded superb images. Steve House read from his new autobiography (Adventure Travel Award). Climber and artist Renan Oxturk described an epic ascent of the great wall of Mount Meru in the Indian Himalaya. The climbers, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Ozturk, planned for 10 days — the climb took 17days; they lost a lot of weight. When finally they made their superlight summit attempt on the fin-like ridge, the ascent was stopped by a non-negotiable gendarme: so near and yet so far. Amongst the book signers was David Roberts with his new biography of Brad Washburn (Mountaineering History Award.) The book signing allowed many opportunities to chat. The picture shows me with Steve Winter. Finally, I did win something — a spontaneous blessing: a very nice down jacket at a reception sponsored by a group working to preserve an area adjacent to the Banff National Park.



The Banff Center is a great place. I was there over 30 years ago to speak to a biochemistry conference. It was a lot smaller then. I could see a bit of a mountain from my room (as a finalist, complementary), but the dining room gives a three quarters panorama. My dedicated publishers, Gail and Charles Fields, were at the meeting to work on book promotion, but the fringe benefit was that they were up at 5 am each morning to go out and photograph. By the Sunday of our departure they had the back roads well worked out. On the Sunday we set out in pitch darkness and, despite very icy roads, we were at Lake Louise in time for the sunrise. This photo was taken on a back road. The flight from Calgary was at 2 pm. I was home by 1:30 am.

Banff Mountain Book Festival-1

FINALIST
Message just received:
On behalf of the 2009 Banff Mountain Book Festival, I am pleased to inform you that Himalayan Portfolios: Journeys of the Imagination, by Kenneth Hanson, has been selected as a finalist -- one of four in the Mountain Image category.

Gail and Charles Fields and this blogger, expect to be present at this international festival from Thursday, November 5th to Saturday, November 7th. Book signings Friday and Saturday.

The other Mountain Image finalists:
Above All: Mount Whitney. David Stark Wilson. USA
The Alps – A Birds Eye View. Matevz Lenarcic. Slovenia
Wildlife of the Canadian Rockies. John Marriott. Canada

The Large Format Conspiracy Again

Fall Exhibit
New England Large Format Photographic Collective,
NELFPC, Until November 6
Gallery hours and directions: http://www.belmonthill.org/

Those in the Boston area may see a selection of work by collective members at the Landau Gallery in the Robsham Arts Center at Belmont Hill School, 350 Prospect St, Bellmont MA. Gene LaFord, once more, did a great job of hanging the show. A cheerful opening was held last Sunday despite rain and sleet. Great gobs of wet snow assaulted those of us driving from Connecticut just after we had entered the Mass Pike. This is my section of the exhibit:

The NELFPC was created a few years ago to bring together like minded practitioners and promote the art of the view camera. See Blog Jan 5, 2009.

Starred Review

Library Journal, 9/15/09
*Hanson, Kenneth. Himalayan Portfolios: Journeys of the Imagination. Fields, dist. by IPG. Sept. 2009. c.190p. illus. maps. ISBN 978-0-9790597-0-4. PHOTOG.
Excerpts:
In this beautifully illustrated, oversized publication, landscape photographer Hanson sets forth over 100 high-resolution black-and-white photographs he took between 1985 and 2005 of the Himalayan mountains and their inhabitants. He presents five geographic portfolios ….. more than a dozen trips to inaccessible Himalayan regions in Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Tibet. The second part of the book features two scholarly essays by Hanson, who is able to envision the mountains, glaciers, rivers, and peoples he photographed from diverse artistic, cultural, scientific, and spiritual perspectives…...
Verdict: With awesome images and insightful commentary, this significant book will engage both general and specialized audiences with various interests not limited to extreme experiences, mountaineering, and fine arts landscape photography. Strongly recommended.—Cheryl Ann Lajos, Free Lib. of Philadelphia.

Book News Annotation, October 2009
Excerpts:
The splendor of this collection of black and white photos of the Himalayas is breathtaking. Hanson, a biochemist in a previous existence, began his photographic journeys in 1986..... The images alone are worth acquiring the book, but the commentary by Hanson that follows the portfolios enhances them greatly. The writing is beautiful; a combination of philosophy and factual information, demonstrating the personal quest that brought Hanson back to the Himalayas time and time again. Link
(For more see the Book Reviews section of my Web Page.)

Virgil Revisited

Getting down from the mountain
My earlier blog (March 15, 2009) about geology and the invention of the photographic process by Fox Talbot included a quotation. Fox Talbot, who had received a an education in mathematics and the Greek and Latin classics, cited two lines from Virgil’s Georgics. Virgil describes making his own way on the heights of Mount Parnassus, the home of the muses, and descending to the Castalian spring of Delphi. As chance would have it, my wife, Betty, and I made a last minute decision to take an excursion to Greece. After traveling from island to island we came to Athens and then to Delphi and the astonishing Sanctuary to Apollo.

Apollo is said to have killed the Pytho, a female serpent that guarded a deep cavern and the spring of Cassotis. This legend was linked to an Apollo cult whose central feature was the Pythian oracle. On ritual occasions the oracle placed herself on a tripod above the vaporous chasm. In this unenviable toxic situation, partially poisoned by the cyanide released from chewing laurel leaves, she uttered strange cries that were interpreted by priests. At the time of Virgil the Sanctuary was still active and, more significantly, the cult was sponsored by the Roman Emperor Augustus, Virgil’s patron.

Steep limestone cliffs rise above the Sanctuary. The Castalian spring is at the bottom of a gully with steep walls — the above photograph was taken from near the spring. Here lies the problem. No obvious track slopes downwards to Castalia’s spring. Poetry should be prepared to meet a reality test. How did Virgil descend from the Parnassian heights without breaking his neck?

Further Research
After visiting the Sanctuary our group stayed in a small hotel in the village adjacent to the Delphi sanctuary. The roads of the village are carved into the mountainside. As the day began to cool, around 5 pm, I set out to explore by ascending the steep sequences of steps that linked one road level to another. Above the final road were open fields with scattered olive trees. A sign indicated a Forestry Commission trail to Mount Parnassus. The highest point of the mountain is about 2,450 meters (8,056 feet); I was probably at 900 meters. I followed the trail upwards past limestone boulders. Soon no village was visible — looking back the panorama extended to the Gulf of Itea, some 5 miles away, and beyond that to the Gulf of Corinth. As the trail approached the steeper rocks it swung to the left but I pushed my way to a ridge on the right where a wire fence blocked further exploration. Beyond the ridge was a precipitous decent to the Stadium of the Sanctuary. The fence could be followed upwards through a barrier of thorns and thistles towards the steeper rocks. If I had been wearing boots instead of sandals I could probably have scrambled beyond the fence, but from my highest point I could see, carved into the limestone, a series of steps. Could this have been the decending path taken by Virgil?

I can only speculate about the upper reaches of the mountain. If it is like the Turkish Mount Olympus (2,366 m/7,762 ft), whose limestone heights I ascended in 2004, it is a rolling barren stone desert. In Turkey there was no certain track and plenty of choice as to route — for a while I was slightly lost in the mist. If it is like Mount Pachnes (2,453m/8,045 ft) in the White Mountains of Crete that I ascended in 2005, the bare rocks may have deep potholes and caves. Mount Parnassus should thus have afforded Virgil plenty of choice for exhilarating wandering. But was Virgil wearing sandals?

The Heroic Quest
The relevance of all this to Himalayan Portfolios lies less in the view camera and geology linkage than in the iconic figure of Virgil -- a molder of the Western concept of the epic form and the heroic quest. The Aeneid, once a staple of a classics-grounded education, decribes how the virtuous Aeneus escaped from the destruction of Troy with his wife (daugher of the slain Priam, king of Troy), his son and his aged father Anchises. The escape was helped by Venus his mother (daughter of Jupiter). He set out to recreate the glory that was Troy in a new city and country, but from the beginning he was opposed by Juno, wife of Jupiter. (The conflict between Venus and Juno started the Trojan War.) In Virgil's poem Aeneus' heroic struggle was accomplished, but with much grief and slaughter. The Aeneid begins with a cry of bafflement: Can there be so much anger in the hearts of the heavenly gods? Tantaene animis caelestibus irae? It is a question that might well be asked when deeply committed and experienced climbers get wiped out by a storm or avalanche.

Virgil’s Virgil and Dante’s Virgil
In Himalayan Portfolios, under the heading “The Eternal Quest” (p 167), I cited Tennyson’s poem Ulysses that influenced generations of explorers and mountaineers. The poem is based on a famous passage in Canto XXVI of Dante’s Inferno. Dante’s guide Virgil, by his authority as an epic poet, commands the flame-encased spirit of Ulysses (Gk. Odysseus) to describe his final journey. It is a story unknown from any source other than Dante. Ulysses, growing old and bored by life in Ithaca, sails southwards beyond the Pillars of Hercules and beyond Africa in search of “knowledge and excellence.” After glimpsing the island of the mythical Mount Purgatory that Dante places at the South Pole, the ship is destroyed in a storm and the flawed hero, Ulysses, ends up in the circle of those who gave council to promote deceit (he promoted the Trojan horse.) The sprit, having related his fate, is dismissed by the poet and Ulysses rejoins the endless cavalcade of wandering flames. Tennyson, by omitting this context, avoids the implication of deceit and clothes Ulysses in the virtue of the struggle.

How did Virgil get the job as Dante’s guide? In Book VI of the Aeneid Virgil describes how the Sybil of Apollo at Cumae in Italy tells Aeneus that if he performs certain tasks, most famously finding and plucking the golden bough, she will lead him to the shade of his father in the underworld. This journey, in which various other shades are encountered, forms the outline for Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio. (The shades encountered include Dido whom Aeneus had abandoned in Carthage --Dido had committed suicide -- not surpisingly, she refuses to speak.) In Dante’s Divine Comedy Virgil takes the place of the Sybil. He qualifies for this task because, like Aeneus, he is wise and virtuous (Inf. I, 85), and because for Dante he is the guru-like teacher and master of the poetic craft. As a soul guide (Gk, psychopomp) he is unlike the Shaman soul guide who escorts the dead (see HP, p84), he is a guide of the living.

Virgil takes on the task because he is asked. In the poem the exiled Dante is lost and frightened and in need of rescue. In this he resembles Wordsworth who experienced a “treacherous desertion” of the soul when the French Revolution turned into the Terror. Wordsworth was rescued through the support of his sister Dorothy and the intervention of Nature (see HP, p142.) For Dante the rescue comes through the intervention of Beatrice. In the poem she is the agent of divine grace. In his commentary “The Figure of Beatrice” Charles Williams points out that Beatrice cannot command Virgil. She may astonish him by her beauty—“Her eyes outshone the firmament.” (Inf II, 55)— but his assistance in rescuing Dante is ultimately a matter of courtesy. (Williams quote Tyndal’s translation of St Paul: “Love suffereth long and is courteous.”) Virgil accepts her request, but it is only when his ghostly form is addressed by Dante, who appeals for help, that he takes on a corporeal form and the dialog can begin (Inf. I,65). In the journey through Hell and Purgatory the bond between Dante and Virgil increases until in the sacred wood of the earthly paradise Virgil departs and Dante is “orphaned”. This takes place when Beatrice appears in a magnificent pageant and Dante turns to Virgil, quoting a passage from the Aenaed relating to Dido and her love for Aeneus, only to find Virgil has departed, his task being completed (Perg. XXX, 46).

It is easy to miss the utter strangeness of Virgil’s commission. Beatrice and Virgil belong to different theological universes separated by a great gulf. Her system centers on a single all loving and all powerful god. Virgil had cried: Can there be so much anger in the hearts of the heavenly gods? He could equally well have been a Himalayan Buddhist believing in many terrifiying earth spirits and mountain gods. How can she be sure he has changed to her system of belief? But Beatrice does not quibble about his theology. They are united in courtesy: he understands her compassion, she accepts his autonomy as a poet. It is as a poet that he can speak to Dante.

Addendum: The classical sublime

The Golden Bough; J.M.W. Turner, exhibited 1834, Tate Gallery. The Sibyl holds a sickle and the freshly cut bough in front of Lake Avernus, the legendary gateway to the Underworld. There are earlier more literal versions. A 1798 version is in the Tate Gallery. "Lake Avernus: Aeneas and the Cumaean Sybyl," 1814-15, is in the Yale Center for British Art. The 1834 version relates to Claud's Aeneus paintings and to Turner's Claud-inspired Carthage paintings. In these late Turner's the gold has taken over the painting. Sir James Frazer in Chapter 1 of the Golden Bough wrote: "Who does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough?"