The ZMM Narrator's Lakes and Valleys.

….“ In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked, and to the answers proposed to these questions. The sweep goes on and on and on so obviously much further than the mind can grasp one hesitates even to go near for fear of getting lost in them and never finding one’s way out.
….What is the truth and how do you know it when you have it? . . . How do we really know anything? Is there an "I," a "soul," which knows, or is this soul merely cells coordinating senses? . . . Is reality basically changing, or is it fixed and permanent? . . . When it’s said that something means something, what’s meant by that?
….Many trails through these high ranges have been made and forgotten since the beginning of time, and although the answers brought back from these trails have claimed permanence and universality for themselves, civilizations have varied in the trails they have chosen and we have many different answers to the same question, all of which can be thought of as true within their own context. Even within a single civilization old trails are constantly closed and new ones opened up.
….It’s sometimes argued that there’s no real progress; that a civilization that kills multitudes in mass warfare, that pollutes the land and oceans with ever larger quantities of debris, that destroys the dignity of individuals by subjecting them to a forced mechanized existence can hardly be called an advance over the simpler hunting and gathering and agricultural existence of prehistoric times. But this argument, though romantically appealing, doesn’t hold up. The primitive tribes permitted far less individual freedom than does modern society. Ancient wars were committed with far less moral justification than modern ones. “ [Cont next.]

The High Country, Beartooth Highway, WY. .
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(Photo = September2006 0147 ...... ZMM Page = 111-112 ...... WayPt =151i )