On Teaching: READING AND CLIMBING MOUNTAINS

I have often discussed with my students the analogy between reading a challenging work of literature and climbing a high mountain trail. First of all, both require a great effort. No one would deny that strenuous labor is required to get through and comprehend a play by Shakespeare or one of Dickens’ thorny novels, and the same is true of climbing a trail in the White Mountains. If someone asked a reader who was in the middle of Dickens’ Little Dorrit whether reading it was a “fun” experience, the answer would probably be somewhat negative, just as a hiker halfway up an almost vertical trail in New Hampshire might not be bubbling over with delight, either. The second similarity is that both serious reading and serious hiking require extreme concentration. If you daydream and dawdle while reading a Shakespeare play, you’re simply not going to get it, and if your mind wanders while climbing the trail to Carter Dome, you may find yourself with a sprained ankle, or worse. Both Macbeth and the Carter Notch Trail demand intense, unremitting focus if we plan to be successful readers or hikers. As a final point of comparison, reading literature and climbing steep trails both make use of delayed gratification – meaning many of the best rewards are put off until near the end. As we get into the final third of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, we often begin to catch glimpses of the overall beauty of the book, just as we may begin to feel proud of our accomplishment as we approach the summit of a mountain. In other words, if you want instant rewards, read easy books and stay on flat trails. Or, to use an old saying, maybe “no pain, no gain” is true for both great books and great mountains.