Looking Up

By Peter Stoler

ON MOUNTAINS: THINKING ABOUT TERRAIN by John Jerome Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 262 pages; $8.95

Last year John Jerome became a counterculture hero with the publication of Truck, an earthy account of his yearlong effort to rehabilitate a 1950 Dodge pickup. Now he turns his restive mind to loftier topics. On Mountains wittily bypasses the customary because-it-is-there rationale to examine the fascination and terror of peaks and promontories.

Jerome grew up in Houston, 50 ft. above sea level. He saw no real mountains until his late teens. Once he did, he was hooked. As he notes, those who are raised in hill country frequently take mountains for granted, as the Swiss did until they realized that other Europeans would pay to climb and ski (and occasionally fall off) their peaks. Others may be terrified of heights, like the 14th century travelers who went through the Alps blindfolded, lest the horrors of the tortuous scenery drive them mad.

But most flatlanders find that mountains stimulate both imagination and curiosity. Looking at pinnacles never seems to be enough; sooner or later, mountain gazers begin to wonder if there is room at the top.

Those who have made an ascent --whether to the top of the Matterhorn or to the less rarefied heights of a 1,000-ft. peak in their nearest state park--are likely to agree with Jerome's paeans to the joys of topography. "Wonder and delight await, up there," he says. So does "elbowroom for the soul." Even those who have never left sea level will enjoy the au thor's lofty musings. Jerome points out that a range like the Himalayas is still growing (Everest may be more than a foot harder to climb in a hundred years than it is today) and explains mountain weather with a clarity some science writers would do well to emylate. He speaks knowledgeably of avalanches, snow and the life that lives on mountains -- from lemmings and insects to the snowmen, abominable and otherwise, who find everything from adventure to a quiet home in the stratosphere.

Some insist that climbing brings man closer to God. Jerome is not sure. But he does believe that mountains help man to appreciate both his planet and himself. "Gradient is the elixir of youth," declares a geologist, and he may be right. Flatlands, worn down to sea level by gravity and the forces of time, are old, almost senile. Mountains, no matter how ancient, are new and dynamic. No one can spend much time with them -- or with Jerome's high-minded volume -- without feeling the same way.

-- Peter Staler

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