Mountain Panic
“Mountain panic appears to be an experience of the numinous, what Rudolf Otto calls ‘the terrible and fascinating mystery,’which he saw as the origin of all religion.”
An Experience in the Mountains
In “Neither Faith nor Reason,” I wrote of an experience I once had with mountain panic, the sense of mysterious dread mountain climbers sometimes feel. My own experience occurred on a virtually unknown mountain in rural Maine, but mountain panic has often been reported on well-known mountains, including Mt. Washington in New Hampshire and Ben Macduiin the Scottish Highlands.
In 1891, the mountain climber J. Norman Collie reported the following encounter on Ben Macdui:
“I was returning from the cairn on the summit in a mist when I began to think I heard something else than merely the noise of my own footsteps. Every few steps I took I heard a crunch, and then another crunch, as if someone was walking after me but taking steps three or four times the length of my own. I said to myself, this is all nonsense. I listened and heard it again but could see nothing in the mist. As I walked on and the eerie crunch, crunch sounded behind me, I was seized with terror and took to my heels, staggering blindly among the boulders for four or five miles nearly down to Rothiemurchus Forest. Whatever you make of it, I do not know, but there is something very queer about the top of Ben Macdui and I will not go back there again.”
Mountain panic appears to be an experience of the numinous, what Rudolf Otto calls “the terrible and fascinating mystery,” which he saw as the origin of all religion. I wrote this poem a number of years ago to describe my own experience.
Mountain Panic
We walked along the ridge, and didn’t speak
But something followed, or the mountain stirred,
Disturbed in dreaming. On the empty peak
Bare branches rustled, and a hunting bird
Looked down at us. The air was cool and thin
And something stirred and shuddered on my skin.
At first, I didn’t look at you. The gaps
And empty places are the silent home
Of bad old dreams. I checked the survey map
Then walked ahead. And quiet and alone
Awareness followed. Something cool and thin
First brushed against, then settled on my skin.
The sky was clear. The sun was bright. The rocks
Were flecked with mica, flashing on the peak.
But I was eager just to hear you talk
Though I myself was not inclined to speak.
Bare branches muttered and their words were thin.
And I saw something shudder on your skin.
I looked at you. You looked at me. We knew.
Then both of us were running. In the sky
The hunting bird looked down at us. And you
Jumped over boulders, unafraid to die-
But both of us were too afraid to speak
Of what it was that shuddered on the peak.
Christopher Scott Thompson
is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, and devotee of Brighid and Macha.
