Aphorisms from the Paso Los Libertadores

1. Do not think for a moment that much of Fred’s philosophy did not come as a result of his denying himself women. Had he had Salome he might have stopped writing. Or certainly what he would have written would not be as remembered. Nothing alters or ends a man’s ability to create like the love of a beautiful woman.

2. Had Fred been physically powerful he would have been the complete philosopher, possibly the first.

3. Think of the long days riding the bicycle in foreign lands as the ploughing and seeding of something as yet unknown. Think of the sitting and the writing as the harvest and the discovery.

4. There is always a cost to the great idea, and it is foremost a physical one.

5. Only in the high mountains will you learn if you are great or merely talented. And only a journey over the high passes will allow you the perspective to understand those who have also traveled there before you. (You cannot transcend your way to these heights from an office cubicle or a university classroom.)

6. The journey must be open-ended, so that you can end it at the right time.

7. The mountains are great because they are what remains of the earth after the waters and winds and snows have torn away what was weakest. The pebbles and dirt are the evidence we have of what did not endure. Yet even the strongest will one day be broken down and each day they are a little more reduced. The point is to endure as long as possible, and to endure gracefully.