| ...Risk is at the heart of all education.
...Why not stay out there in the wilderness the rest of your days…? Because
that's not where men are…The final test for me of the legitimacy of the
experience is 'How well does your experience of the sacred in nature enable
you to cope more effectively with the problems of mankind when you come back
to the city?'
...It has to be real enough to kill you.
...It doesn't matter what it is, you have to have something to fight.
Doesn't have to be a mountain, but it has to be something. And it isn't
important whether you win or lose. Only that you keep fighting.
...You've climbed the highest mountain in the world. What's left? It's all
downhill from there. You've got to set your sights on something higher than
Everest.
...The key to Unsoeld's evangelical credo about mountain climbing is that we
have become alienated from our bodies and our "selves" because we're
alienated from nature; that the experience of nature is so mysterious, so
powerful and so fascinating that it cannot be put into words; that intense
experience, to the point of putting your life at risk, is a path to
discovering your bliss. He argues repeatedly that words cannot substitute
for experience; to prove his point he even drags an audience member onto the
stage (a foundation executive with one of the Arden's principal funders the
night I saw it) to do a simple physical trust exercise. (Cary
M. Mazer)
...He didn't climb a mountain merely "because it was there." His task was to
know himself better, to test himself. Unsoeld was instrumental in
establishing the Outward Bound program, premised on the notion of pushing
beyond one's personal comfort zone to gain a deeper grasp of the soul. He
was once asked by a fearful mother if he could guarantee her son's safety;
no, he told her. But by sheltering her son from risk, he added, she would
guarantee the death of his soul. (Rick
Pender)
...Why don’t you stay in the wilderness?
Because that isn’t where it is at; it’s back in
the city, back in downtown St. Louis, back in Los Angeles. The final
test is whether your experience of the sacred in nature enables you to cope
more effectively with the problems of people. If it does not enable
you to cope more effectively with the problems - and sometimes it doesn’t,
it sometimes sucks you right out into the wilderness and you stay there the
rest of your Life - then when that happens, by my scale of value; it’s
failed. You go to nature for an experience of the sacred...to
re-establish your contact with the core of things, where
it’s really at, in order to enable you to come back to the world of
people and operate more effectively. Seek ye first the kingdom of
nature, that the kingdom of people might be realized. (Unsoeld,
1974)
...Willi Unsoeld, the short, ebullient pioneer of the first ascent of the
West Ridge of Everest during the successful American Everest Expedition...
After spending time working as a Peace Corps director in Nepal, he joined
Outward Bound and traveled about the country giving speeches and promoting
Outward Bound. Outward Bound could not have found a better spokesman,
for Unsoeld was a dynamic, charismatic speaker. Eventually Unsoeld
became disenchanted with personalities in the higher levels of the
organization and took a job with an experimental school in Washington,
Evergreen College. With no departments, no faculty rank, no grades, no
required courses, Evergreen was to the liberal-minded Unsoeld an educator's
dream. Unsoeld taught year-long courses such as "Individual in
America," utilizing wilderness recreation as a means to stimulate
philosophical study and discussion. (* Some of his classes became so
unstructured that most of the class time was spent simply hammering out what
students wanted to get out of class. Some of his brightest students
dropped out in frustration.)
A few years earlier, Unsoeld had been a spokesman for Outward Bound, but his
increasing popularity made him a spokesman for the whole wilderness
recreation movement. More people than ever before were flocking to the
mountains, rivers, and wilderness areas. His life, full of energy,
changed tragically when his daughter, Devi, died while attempting to climb
the Himalayan mountain, Nanda Devi, for which she was named. Two and a
half years later, Unsoeld and a young student were caught and both died in
an avalanche while his party of Evergreen students were attempting a winter
ascent of Mount Rainier. (Ron
Watters)
|
