THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

However, this anthology is not about her, but about the authors who contributed to it: those writers who took the time to contemplate isolation, loneliness, and solitude in all its various forms-with wonder and worry and wisdom.

Charlotte Austin sums up the thematic concept in her essay, "I Go to the Mountain":

Sometime that afternoon, miles from the glacier and still miles from the car, I wonder: Why have I come here? It is not for the glamour of climbing mountains, for I have told no one where I will be. It is not for the solitude, although it is something I crave. Though I do not admit it to myself at the time, I do know: I come to the mountains for this dirty, sweating, hungry, bruised state. The Argentinean climber Rolando Garibotti names it: it is the search for "unmitigated contact with the natural world." I am there to strip away the human separation that hovers between me and the rest of the world, so that I can not only see but feel where I am, who I am, what I am. City life is more sanitary, and may be safer, but it has created a distance, physically and emotionally, between humans and the rest of the universe.