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Imagination is haunted by the swiftness of the creatures that live on the mountain – eagle and peregrine falcon, red deer and mountain hare. The reason for their swiftness is severely practical: food is so scarce up there that only those who can move swiftly over vast stretches of ground may hope to survive. The speed, the whorls and torrents of movement, are in plain fact the mountain’s own necessity. But their grace is not necessity. Or if it is – if the swoop, the parabola, the arrow-flight of hooves and wings achieve their beauty by strict adherence to the needs of function – so much the more is the mountain’s integrity vindicated. Beauty is not adventitious but essential.
