Climbing Everest
In recent years, we’ve had a strange break in our academic year, a hybrid of All Saints’ Day/All Souls’ Day and Halloween, providing something like Holy Week, more profane than holy, and commemorated by binging on streaming videos, which teachers could then assign to students at all grade levels, even up to the postgraduate students.
Alas, the streaming networks have instead created a season for showing horror films, ghosts and ghouls, and zombies, or even romantic flicks (horror brings hearts closer, I guess).
An exception that I wanted to endorse is a film streaming on Apple TV with a simple title, “Tenzing,” a biopic about Tenzing Norgay (1914-1986), a Sherpa (the tribal name) guide who made it with a British man, Sir Edmund Hillary, as one of two people to the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. They were part of a larger expedition, but only two were selected, based on merit, to make the final ascent, leaving behind tons of mountaineering equipment, food, and science equipment for the guides to deal with.
I’m not into mountaineering, especially at my age and with several health handicaps, but mountains have always fascinated me, especially if they are in proximity to the sea, and we have many such places in the Philippines.
I have also read various accounts of Everest expeditions that have become more critical through the years. Early accounts were all about conquests, which were tied closely to the colonial era and white men. (Very, very few women are on the list of those who made it to the top. We tie these colonial “discoveries” to names and nationalities as well as to the years of their “discoveries.” National holidays were declared across regions, e.g., Columbus Day named after Christopher Columbus, for “discovering” the Americas (and Ferdinand Magellan for “discovering” Asia). Amends have since been made: Columbus Day has been abolished or devalued in North and South America.
As for Mount Everest, the traditional narrative has been that of men, almost all European or American, making it to the summit since 1953. It has become a competition among countries. The British liked to boast that it was their mountain, or even the Queen’s Mountain, referring to Elizabeth II, who ascended the throne in 1952.
These mountaineering expeditions were headed mainly by European men with dozens of mainly Sherpas, a Nepalese ethnic group known for their mountaineering skills and strength, the better to carry all the mountaineering gear. There is a scene in the movie “Tenzing” where the British expedition head orders several of the Sherpa men to return to the base camp to haul up their equipment. I had read about how the Sherpas resented their being made glorified servants, but it also became clearer to me: How can you have the white men loaded down with their mountaineering stuff if they are to reach the mountain peak and plant their banners to declare their “victory.”
The hero of this film, Tenzing, had been one of the “natives” and had joined one of the earliest expeditions as a young carrier and guide, but had to face so much discrimination not only from the Europeans but also from local men who did not belong to the Sherpas, and who did not have fancy letters of recommendation to certify to his long years of climbing experience. In the end, though, he got the recognition he deserved, poetically described as having Everest constantly in his eyes.
Watching the film (and reading a book based on interviews with Tenzing), you begin to pick up a different perspective on Everest and mountain climbing (why did it take Europeans to think of “conquering” Everest? Watch the movie for a clincher from one of the Nepalese characters, who drops a line to the effect, “But we have always been on this mountain”; that is, there was never a compulsion to climb.
We read of other kinds of conquests Tenzing and his compatriots had, my favorite being his insistence on holding a particular religious ritual together with the Europeans, to get permission from the goddess of the mountain and to ask for her protection. At the ceremony, the rinpoche (a Buddhist functionary and leader) tells the people that Tenzing would lead them, knowing the way. Tenzing is startled, asking how he would know the way.
The rinpoche answers, “As a child would know the way through his mother by climbing up her lap.”
There is so much grandeur in the mountains, but there is, too, humility for mountaineers—whatever one’s nationality (there have been a handful of Filipinos who have climbed Everest, including three women)—in the journeys with mountains, with nature.
I will do a kind of Everest, too, with my students this semester and look for lessons yet to be learned. Today, there are tour groups and accommodations for Mount Everest, with two-week trips starting at around $80,000 per person.
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