Growing Up

NEAR Mt. Seward, in Alaska, stands Mt. Marathon, a site of supreme folly, oft repeated. The slope is steep and slippery, and with regularity hundreds of adrenaline seeking fitness hubrists compete to ascend and descend three thousand feet faster than anyone else, risking life, limb, and pride. Many sustain severe injuries, at least one has not been seen since.Most usually these gratuitous displays of courage and arrogance in the lower forty eight, but no part of the empire of illusion must be omitted. A young person is more likely to see this in terms of because its there, those older and wiser might tend a bit towards eye rolling. Goethe said: "we learn only in old age what happened to us in our youth." He further said: "young people would indeed be insufferable, had I not once been young myself." Coincidentally, or possibly not, we begin to see the folly in such high risk low yield enterprises about the same time we are no longer capable of carrying them out.