Community Gallery: What Are Men to Rocks and Mountains?

Us humans have a long and intricate relationship with mountains and the act of traversing them to spend some time surrounded by nature, regardless of whether we reach the peak or not. Much like artistic practices, our connection to the mountains transcends the physical.

"What are men to rocks and mountains?" one of Jane Austen's characters said in her well-known novel, Pride and Prejudice. In this article, we’re looking at the beauty of hiking with the help of community members who have shared their travel photos with us.

We’ve written much about mountains, including their inherent meaning to us in the sense of being human. In the magazine, we’ve also met with and interviewed with various artists who shared with us the interconnection between their images and their love for nature, such as film photographer Cassie Corridoni's (@cassiecorr) LomoChrome Purple photos taken in the great outdoors. We also collected camping snaps from our community members encapsulating their sense of adventure.

Hiking brings us a sense of vulnerability and a better perspective on things. After a long and arduous climb, we’re granted a bird’s eye view of not just the nature that surrounds us but also our own strengths and vulnerabilities.

Maybe we realize that a problem we’ve been mulling over doesn’t have much basis to grieve us the way we’ve let it, or maybe we come to an epiphany about a decision. There’s a potential to gain clarity, to see life as a whole and not just in its small details; to see things through its core and to stop hyper-focusing on the minutiae.

The path to the mountains is also full of curiosities and sources of excitement. Maybe we meet another group of travelers, get acquainted with local animals, pass by strange abandoned buildings and other man-made structures, or see mysteriously-shaped flora.

And, as usual, it's the small things that fill the soul with such wonders, lifting our spirits up and allowing us to view life positively again. It allows us to see that there's more to life we haven't witnessed yet. That whatever our troubles are, there are better reasons to hold on to the little glimmers and small miracles.

When we look at the rest of the world in comparison to how small we are, it gets easier to come to the conclusion that we only occupy a small chunk of history compared to the trails we follow and the peaks we climb to, and that we're only a dot in the universe, with a universe of our own in our head.

As film photographers and artists, nature reveals to us our own limitations, and in accordance with that, our own potential and possibilities. We have much more control of our own perceptions than we think we're capable of, and there's more beauty around us than we can ever comprehend.

What was the most remarkable mountain you hiked? Share it with us below!

written by sylvann on 2023-11-17 #culture #people #places #mountains #hiking #gallery #community