MOUNTAIN PROSPECT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 January 1942, Page 4

MOUNTAIN PROSPECT

SCENE OF BEAUTY & GRANDEUR. Looking back on the days spent on the hills, writes Mr Frank S. Smythe, the famous Alpinist, in his book, “The Mountain Vision,” the mountaineer will admit that clouds as much as the hills contributed to the aesthetic pleasure. A thousand visions will flash through his mind. He will remember the lurid piling up and dark onrush of the storm, the silvery mist of morning lofting up the sun-warmed precipice. For me there is one oft-recurring vision which epitomises the beauty and grandeur of mountain and cloud. It is a view from the foothills of the Himalayas looking northward to the snows. In the foreground stand tall oaks and conifers, with between them the blue of far-off hills. Between the clouds, above the valleys, above the forests, above the blue ranges of hills, above all ordinary things, shine out the eternal snows. And as I gaze in silence and at peace I am conscious of an allpervading Presence and there comes to me the splendid words of John Ruskin: “Out from between the cloudy pillars as they pass emerge for ever the great battlements of the memorable and perpetual hills.”