“Can I say ‘annoying’?” That’s the question my daughter has been asking me of late, as she explores the boundaries of the new vocabulary she is learning. “Yes, you can say ‘annoying,'” I reply. “Can I say ‘shut up’?” she asks. “No, you can’t say ‘shut up.'” “And I can’t say ‘shit’,” she states matter-of-factly. That’s right, she already knows she can’t say ‘shit’ but she still gets a tremendous kick from just quickly confirming that fact with me because to do so, of course, means getting to say ‘shit’ all over again without fear of punishment. It’s like the joke my son told me the other day, warning me ahead of time that it contained a curse: A 6-year-old boy was scolded by his parents for still talking like a baby. ‘Why don’t you use more grown-up words,’ they said. So the next day, when he got home from school, his parents asked him what he had done in class and he said: ‘We read a book called Winnie the Shit.’

Words have an awesome power, and there’s no clearer example of that than when children deploy new vocabulary to see what effect their words have on the world. My daughter, for example, wields the word ‘annoying’ all the time now, using it to describe anything and everything that elicits her displeasure. My son, who’s eight, enjoys using mild curse words in safe contexts, like in a joke. He hears other kids using them for real in the schoolyard and can see the mixture of shock and admiration their use evokes in other children. My kids are learning that words are not just airy nothings; they have a very real and dramatic impact on the world—they can make other people laugh or cry, they can help get you what you want, they can get you into or out of a lot of trouble, too.

Adults are usually unconscious of the latent power of language, but you can feel it in full force again when learning a foreign tongue. One of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s best aphorisms is:

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

I felt my linguistic limits extended when I learned Dutch about 17 years ago. Each language has words in it that don’t exist in any other tongue, and one of the greatest joys of speaking another language is stretching your mind to encompass this new vocabulary. Gezellig is a word like that in Dutch. It has so many nuanced meanings that it’s impossible to find a simple English equivalent. Indeed, there is no single English equivalent since gezellig is a word that expresses a distinctly Dutch state of mind. It means different things in different circumstances. An evening with friends can be gezellig, meaning friendly and intimate and fun. But inanimate objects can also be gezellig, like a room with a roaring fire in the fireplace, meaning cozy and inviting. But an individual can also be gezellig, meaning that he or she is warm and welcoming. It was not until I learned Dutch, and came to understand the meaning of this word, that I was able to recognize the quality of gezelligheid when I saw it. This not only added a new word to my vocabulary; it added a new experience to my world.

And so it is with my daughter. At almost four years old, she is intrepidly exploring the world of words, experimenting with language to see which words cause happiness, which words cause pain, which words make people laugh, which words make them cry. By trying out words like ‘annoying’, ‘shut up’ and ‘shit’ on me, she’s testing to see if they cause the desired effect. This is something we never stop doing. What American poet John Hall Wheelock wrote is just as true of adults as it is for children:

A child, when it begins to speak, learns what it is that it knows.

I can see why President Bush likes it. Although, technically speaking, he’s into “clearing brush”. And he uses power tools, which disqualifies him. Chopping wood is one of those primal activities that directly meets a basic need, and consequently provides a primal kind of satisfaction. These days we usually meet our basic needs at one or two removes. Few of us grow or kill our own food anymore, for example, even fewer make our own clothes, and fewer still build our own houses. But almost anyone can chop wood, thereby providing fuel to keep yourself and your family warm. It’s an ancient chore, provided you use and ax and not a chain saw, and is very conducive to contemplating the bare necessities of life.

The first thing you need, of course, is an ax. I had only an old one, the wooden shaft worn smooth with age and the head flecked with rust. This ax clearly hadn’t been cleaving any timber recently. I ran my thumb along the edge and it felt about as sharp as a butter knife. This just wouldn’t cut it, I thought. I don’t chop wood every day, so initially thought I should have the ax sharpened first. But a friend, with more experience than I, took a few whacks to show me that it would do just fine. With a few fell swoops, the logs split open with a crack. Often the best preparation for a task is just doing it. Use sharpens a dull ax. So I launched into the logs with gusto, letting the chips fall where they may.After a while, chopping wood becomes a meditation. You’re still paying attention to what you’re doing (you’d better be anyway), but your mind also wanders into a placid place where all kinds of thoughts bob up, bounce around on the surface for a bit and then vanish. It’s satisfying on both a physical and psychological level. I enjoyed inflicting violence on those logs, hoisting the ax above my head and bringing it down with as much force as I could muster. And it was very rewarding to hear the logs burst open with a sound like a gunshot. My enjoyment was enhanced by knowing it was all for a good cause (i.e. building a fire that night). I also enjoyed following where my mind roamed. It’s sort of like walking a dog: you keep the dog on the leash, restricting its movements, until you get to the park, where you let him loose to run wherever he wants to. It was a pleasure to let my mind off the leash while chopping, and to follow it at a leisurely place. I thought of the aphorisms of Jesus, the ones found in the gnostic gospels rather than the New Testament, and one aphorism in particular that has always haunted me:

I am the light that is over all things. I am all: From me all has come forth, and to me all has reached. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.

When I was finished, I was sweaty, tired and satisfied. Then I started neatly piling the logs up in a stack. You’re not finished anything until you’ve cleaned up the mess you’ve made. Seeing the logs all stacked up against the wall gave me the same kind of satisfaction as contemplating a well-stocked wine cellar: the bottles look very attractive in their tidy rows, but you know you’re going to have even more fun drinking them. We now had more than enough logs to keep us warm for a good long while. It’s probably the only time I was really happy to see all my hard work go up in smoke.

There must have been about a dozen of them, each making its own slow, stately progress across the sidewalk, antennae probing the air in slow motion, pinwheeling like the limbs of a cartoon character that’s just walked off the edge of a cliff, waving around like the tentacles of a sea anemone. They formed an elegant regatta; instead of sails, each hoisted its own carapace, navigating this dangerous crossing by touch. They were difficult to see, though, their shells blending so completely into the color of the concrete. I thought of the Allied convoys that ferried supplies across the Atlantic during World War II. Of the scores of ships that set out, up to half were routinely picked off by German U-boats. How many snails would make it to their destination: the brick wall on the other side of the sidewalk, behind which lay a neighbor’s front garden and safety?

The sidewalks are thick with snails this time of year, but I had never before seen so many travelling in a pack or a herd or a bevvy, or whatever the technical term is for a group of snails. Everything about them reminded me of ships. They bobbed up and down slightly as they sailed along, their bodies moving in a wave-like motion, the slimy foot on which they glide rippling like the surface of the ocean. And they even left a wake, thin strips of mucous just like the ones I see glistening in our garden every morning, tracing the paths where the snails have been. They were so calm, so determined, so oblivious to the danger they were in from pedestrians. I thought of putting up a road sign, CAUTION: SNAIL CROSSING. By the way, May 24 is National Escargot Day.About 45 minutes later, I was coming back the same way and stopped to see how the snails had fared. Of the 12 that originally set out, eight made it to the garden. I saw one still making the final ascent of the brick wall on the other side of the sidewalk. I counted four oily, snot-like clumps and four crushed shells. Not a bad success rate, I thought, for such a perilous trek.

I don’t know any aphorisms about snails, but I do know a few aphorisms about persistence, and that’s what impressed me most about these snails. They risked everything to get to the other side. To me, their progress looked plodding. But for the snails it was a race against death. And they took their time, taking the perils and the possibilities in stride. Like Baltasar Gracián, a 17th century Spanish Jesuit monk, said:

Be slow and sure. Things are done quickly enough if done well. If just quickly done they can be quickly undone. To last an eternity requires an eternity of preparation.

I am reading The Note-Books of Samuel Butler at the moment. Butler was an English novelist, painter, early convert and then opponent of Darwinism, sheep farmer and aphorist, and his Note-Books have been one of those rare reading experienes in which I find things I’ve been thinking about already beautifully and perfectly expressed. Sometimes, a book arrives in your life at exactly the right moment, when your mental and/or emotional path seems to completely overlap with the author’s. Butler’s has been just such a book for me. Often, the correspondances are startling, as in this passage, which I read yesterday, after posting On Climbing La Lance: “Everything that is worth attending to fatigues as well as delights, much as the climbing of a mountain does so. Chapters and short pieces give rests during which the attention gathers renewed strength and attacks with fresh ardour a new stretch of the ascent.”

That’s exactly how I feel about climbing mountains, and about surmounting supposedly insurmountable obstacles. It’s also a brilliant explanation for why aphorisms are short (see my first law of aphorisms). And it reminds me of a somewhat overwrought aphorism about aphorisms and mountains by Nietzsche, who was an avid mountain climber:

Whoever writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read but to be learned by heart. In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that one must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks—and those who are addressed tall and lofty.

Which leads me to another paradox about climbing mountains: during the descent, there is far more opportunity to look up than during the ascent. We didn’t quite make it all the way to the top of La Lance. That would have taken another two hours or so of strenuous walking. Our goal was the old farmhouse in the pasture, and when we reached it we sat down in the grass to enjoy the view. Naturally enough, heading back down the mountain was a stroll in the park compared to climbing up it in the first place. On the way down, I passed various landmarks I first noticed on the way up, like that fossil ammonite. But I also revisited spots where I had stopped to rest, places where I plopped my sweaty, exhausted self down on a rock during the climb and thought: ‘I’m never gonna make this. I’ll just wait here til the rest come back down.’

These little moments of weakness, crises of confidence are all part of the climb. But walking past those spots again during the descent, I was in a much better position (and state of mind) to notice my surroundings. More often than not, the places where I sat with my head in my hands contemplating my aching feet offered astoundingly scenic views, panoramas I didn’t notice at the time because I was looking (and feeling) down. It put me in mind of another mountain-related aphorism, again by a Dutchman, Multatuli, psuedonym of Eduard Douwes Dekker:

A standpoint reached as the result of an ascent has a different meaning from that same standpoint reached as a result of a fall.

Like Butler’s remark, it’s worth keeping in mind when climbing mountains, surmounting (or failing to surmount) insurmountable obstacles, and suffering the fatigue and delight that comes from attending to whatever is worth attending to.

I have to admit that I’m not much of a mountain climber, or even a pleasure walker. Which is strange, because I’m normally very much into “goal-directed activities.” One of the reasons I used to dislike taking walks, or at least the excuse I frequently cited for not taking part in them, was that I didn’t see the point. You’re not actually going anywhere when you take a walk, you’re just taking a walk. That’s not a goal-directed activity, you see, so I wasn’t interested. (I have been woefully wrong about taking walks for years now–walks do have goals, often extremely worthwhile ones, like conviviality–and goal-directed activities are way over-rated anyway, but more on that in a separate posting.) Climbing a mountain is fundamentally different from taking a walk in that there is a very clear goal from the outset: getting to the top. I have my wife to thank for finally convincing and cojoling me into getting to the top of La Lance, a modest mountain in southern France, and thereby opening my eyes to the wonders of walking.

Fortunately, no ropes, pulleys or ice picks are involved in getting to the top of La Lance. There’s a nicely maitained path, steep and very rocky but navigable, that goes all the way to the top. In early spring you can see the path from a distance, criss-crossing the mountain like Harry Potter’s lightning-shaped scar. From the other side of the valley, my daughter called it “the writing on the mountain.” The path is like one very long sentence that tells the mountain’s story. You read it as you walk it, the way young children run a finger along each word as they move down the page. La Lance has an old story to tell. Embedded in one large slate slab in the middle of the path is a fossil, a partial impression of what once must have been an enormous ammonite. Millions of years ago La Lance was underwater. A more recent chapter in the mountain’s history is found near the summit: an old farmhouse perched on the edge of a lush green field that was once grazing ground for sheep, back when people still kept sheep around here.One of the paradoxes of climbing a mountain is that the very nature of the task forces you to look down while the whole point of the exertion is to look up. To get up that steep ascent I crouched into a kind of hunched position: my upper torso was almost parallel with the path while my legs were still perpendicular to it. It felt kind of like leaning into a strong wind; the mountain wasn’t going to make it easy for me. In that posture I crunched my way slowly up the path. On few occasions have I been as acutely aware of the muscles in my buttocks. If I hadn’t assumed this position I would never have noticed that ammonite fossil. Or the various animal tracks that were preserved in the soft earth beside the path. Or the strange feces on a flat rock from a species none of us could identify. In short, if I hadn’t been climbing La Lance I would never have noticed what was right there under my feet.

The Dutch aphorist Frans Hiddema has a great aphorism about climbing, which is slightly strange for a Dutchman since the only thing flatter than the Netherlands is a poorly delivered speech by President Bush:

He who is always climbing sees less and less of more and more.

Occasionally, I paused and looked up from the climb, remembering my goal. And then I was stunned at all I could see: mountains and pastures, vineyards and villages for close to 50 miles all around; in the furthest distance, the silver sliver of the Rhone. It was awesome. Climbing a mountain has a dual effect: it rubs your nose in the earth, making you work hard for every step, then unfurls a majestic vista that stops you in your tracks and can only be appreciated from a distance. During the climb, you get the mountain in close-up. When you stop, you get the big picture.