KATHMANDU, March 13 -- Mountaineers have been asked why they climb mountains for as long as big mountains have been climbed. But for Himalayan and other Native peoples around the world, the question is 'Which deity lives up there?'
Many mountaineers are not as spiritual anymore, and their relationship with high mountains is more ambiguous. The ancestors of Western civilisation in ancient Greece imagined that gods lived on mountain tops. Alas, sacredness today is a bit outdated.
Although traditions linked to mountain spirits are still alive, many of us have lost the connection to that specialness of what some call 'Creation', or 'Nature', and its powers which humans used to personify in the form of deities. Hence, disenchantment with the m...