The Eight Mountains

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MY FATHER HAD his own way of going to the mountains: scarcely inclined to meditation, full of obstinacy and arrogance. He would climb headlong, without pacing himself, always competing with someone or something, and where the trail seemed overlong he would take a short cut via the steepest slope. When you were with him it was forbidden to stop—complaining about hunger or the cold was not permitted—but you were allowed to sing a good song, especially when caught in a storm or in thick fog. And to whoop whilst flinging yourself down a snowfield.

My mother, who had known him since he was a boy, used to say that even then he would wait for nobody, intent as he was on pursuing anyone glimpsed up ahead: it was only a strong pair of legs that could make you desirable in his eyes, and she hinted, laughing, that this was how she had seduced him. Later on, once the uphill race had begun, she preferred to sit in a meadow, or to soak her feet in a stream, or to identify by name the herbs and flowers. At the summit she liked more than anything to gaze at the distant peaks, to reflect on those of her youth, and to remember when she had reached them and with whom—while my father at that point was overcome by a kind of disappointment, and just wanted to return home.

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