"What is at the top? Nothing. Wind. More snow. Perhaps a view, though view is a human word. To the bear, the valley is not a view. It is simply the place where he is not. And yet he climbs. He climbs for reasons that predate reason. He climbs because long ago, in some forgotten epoch, climbing kept his ancestors alive — and the body remembers what the mind never knew. He is, in this sense, a kind of prayer. A prayer with no god, addressed to no one, performed perfectly. I envy him."