Two weeks from tomorrow I will go to the Alps again. This year I will first spend a week climbing with a friend, and then Lauren and the children will join me for another week of walking and a little bit of climbing. This was Lauren’s suggestion, upon my insistence that they join me this year. She expects that a week of real climbing before their arrival will take the mountains out of my system. Be that as it may, once again I find myself in the same position as previous summers: I simply cannot believe that I will be going up so soon. This world and that world have so little, if anything, in common that all my plans appear almost surreal. As soon as I find myself between the rocks, this world will seem to me as distant and foreign, or simply unimaginable, as that world does now. Come to think of it, this is perhaps what most attracts me to the mountains.