"If man could go far enough from the cities

and borders and mirrors, and climb just high enough, and, in process,

relinquish all that was base and binding in the self, he might at last be fit to stand before what could never be met in the mess of reality."

A young mathematician intends to climb a mountain in the Americas, convinced he will find an eternal, Living Presence he believes is waiting for him at the summit. In spite of the warnings of his loved ones all around him, the pilgrim casts off his possessions, his name, and every trace of the world he once knew, and departs his homeland a little before dawn one summer. Along the slopes, he is accompanied by a red-skinned native who shows him all the ways he has walked once before.

The two men talk and argue all the way to the peak.