Armand collected the artwork of Rockwell Kent and a print of this piece, entitled "Pinnacle", hung in his bedroom. I was immediately reminded of it when I read the following diary entry:
July 10, 1944. No one has suggested any day off for me yet, but this week I'll do my own suggesting. Tomorrow starts my 4th week and I'm all for a rest - the trail up to Teton Glacier - 8 miles each way - is clear of snow, I'm told, and that's my meat.
Not only the solitude, but, as a pamphlet here in tower on constructing and manning lookouts in California forests notes, the frequent high winds get on your nerves. And damned if they don't. These here whistle and spurt and make me nervous and in evening, they build up an eerie whine that I could do without very nicely.
Sometimes, on the many hikes M. and I, or I by myself and with others, have taken, I've been acutely miserable, ill, worn to the breaking point, scared half to death, even bored (as the summer in Badlands and now and then here), but in long run all these annoyances fade away and there remains a general feeling of joy, contentment and adventure that enriches and diversifies one's life, gives him something good to look back upon and therefore, something to make his existence happier.
Proust was right in that in the long run reality and truth may be different from the facts as experienced at the moment. My recollections of the steel cable descent of Longs Peak lack the miserable fear I felt just at the moment. In fact, that fear was largely gone and a new conception of the descent building up in my mind by the time we reached the automobile and started back to Estes Park.
So far, I wouldn't exchange most of the events of my life for that of damned near anyone I know - not if I got a bonus thrown in.
That was Armand, looking back upon the first thirty years of his life. I believe he would have said the same thing while looking back at nearly 93 years on earth.