Into Thin Air Blog 2

Numerous scenes in the book, Into Thin Air, mainly describe the religious ceremonies performed by the Sherpas, (The Sherpas are the climber's helpers. They mainly carry packs, cook, and set up camps.) and the climber's themselves. The following is a description of a religious undertaking for protection on the expedition. "To appease Sagarmatha, this year-as every year-the Sherpas had built more than a dozen beautifully, meticulously constructed stone chortens at Base Camp, one for each expedition. A perfect cube five feet high, the altar in our camp was capped with a triumvirate of carefully selected pointed stones, above which rose a ten-foot wooden pole crowned with an elegant juniper bough. Five long chains of brightly colored prayer flags were then strung radially from the pole above our tents to protect the camp from harm. Every morning before dawn our Base Camp sirdar-an avuncular, high respected, forty-something Sherpa named Ang Tshering- would light sprigs of juniper incense and chant prayers at the chorten; before heading into the Icefall, Westerners and Sherpa alike would walk past the altar-keeping it always on the right-and through the sweet clouds of smoke to receive a blessing from Ang Tshering." (pg. 132-133) In the memoir, both the religious Sherpas and the either non-religious or those of a completely different religion still received the Buddhist blessing and prayers before climbing the mt. Everest. The author is mainly describing how nervous all of the climbers felt, showing that they were willing to undergo a completely different religious ritual just as a safety blanket for climbing the mountain. Even those who weren't very religious, like the climbers that usually didn't even practice their own faith, complied to the blessing. The connection I'm making is that no matter what we believe in, many gods, one god, no god, there is always a point where people are so desperate that no matter what they think, they will start praying for divine intervention. That feeling that you alone can't do it, so when a miracle happens, the credit goes to something we don't understand. That is the basis of religion, and that is why in the direst situations, humans resort to prayer, whether it's intentional or unintentional. The personal connection for me usually occurs in a baseball game. It sounds petty, and it's nowhere near as life-threatening as the situation Jon Krakauer is in, but when another teammate is up to bat and there is nothing I can do, I start silently thinking,"please, please, just hit it; just a base hit." When you find bodies on the mountain that have been there for years, or when you just need to win a game, both the author and I resort to prayer.