It's not at all difficult for me to dredge my memory to recall the focus felt on achieving a goal that required every last bit of stamina and energy that a middle-aged woman with teens alongside, reaching the summit of a mountain could feel. It was an adventure that my husband and I loved to share with our children. And through the years of visiting the White Mountains of New Hampshire we managed to climb most of the presidential peaks and a good many others.

There were climbs in the Great Smokies, in British Columbia's coastal mountains and outside Tokyo in Japan as well. They all represented a pinnacle of enjoyment achieved through an expenditure of energy and enthusiasm.

It was exhilarating, it was pleasurable, and on many occasions somewhat frightening. Trails that were steeply demanding of all our strength and determination to ascend to achieve that goal of reaching the top, looking out all around at a never-ending march of other mountains, some whose summits were lower, some higher, the scope of the sky and the prevailing winds, the penetrating sun and the incoming clouds bringing in rain, or as sometimes happens, sleet, and sometimes a fearful thunderstorm. Not much fixates the mind as keenly as thunder and lightning hissing and clapping as you stand poised to look for cover or descend into the forest below the treeline for cover.

So there is some of the allure that I can relate to in the physical and mental endurance trial that becomes ascending a mountain as formidable as Mount Everest. But my imagination reaches a plateau when I read descriptions of climbers' extremities becoming frostbitten to the extent that gangrene will set in and they must face surgery, losing fingers, toes, feet, hands. And nor do I quite understand the kind of furious mindset that locks into achieving a summit where an almost perpendicular ascent with crampons takes place, where ladders and ropes are used to crawl over yawning chasms below which thousands of feet of a cold, dark, icy void beckons. And nor could I ever place myself in a situation where raging winds threaten to blow a tiny tent off a narrow mountain shelf, with the occupants praying they will survive the icy blasts. Let alone having to wade through waist-high snow accumulations.

That kind of physical adversity is a stretch too far for me. Never mind the fear-shuddering dangers inherent in clambering up a mountain to heights known as the "death zone", where oxygen is sparse, and the brain begins to react to its starvation, and people's ability to make logical decisions become compromised, threatening their existence. Yes, of course, for those who manage to achieve that impossible height and look down upon the world below them from the Earth's highest point, a euphoria that I will never experience is their reward.

I'm grateful for the opportunities that love of nature and a moderate sense of adventure did permit me to experience some truly wonderful adventures that live in my mind as times and places of great value to me. Just as well I'd experienced what I did; venturing abroad on such an ambitious scale as the Himalaya, or almost equally demanding mountain ranges in other places of the world where the mountain scenery is vastly beyond the human scale of perception and comfort is meant to be savoured by those who feel the experience has value that may transcend their potentially shortened lifespan.