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JAMES K. BAXTER'S OTAGO WORLDS Lawrence Jones
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Page 44
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The mountaineer himself was also an inhabitant of the Wilderness. At McKinnon Pass near the phallic monument to the explorer (the cross has been added and is 'irrelevant'), McKinnon is grouped with 'mountaineers, deerstalkers, / Guides. . . men of the death-bound kind', and is contrasted to 'You who lie / In dry beds'. Similarly, in the Matukituki Valley the poet contrasts himself to the moutaineers attempting Mt Aspiring (like McKinnon associated with kea) and speculates that they achieve 'a communion with what eludes our net, Leviathan / Stirring to ocean birth our inland waters'. Thus sea and mountain imagery come together in expressing the 'negative side of God's mercy', and the mountaineers, who possibly experience 'the hermit's peace / And mindless ecstasy ' are the contemplatives who seek that aspect of God, men who 'unconsciously aspire to sanctity by way of the discipline of mountaineering'. |
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