Football commentators manufacture and then spend their lives reproducing cliches. One cliche suffering chronic impact deflation is, ‘Now they’ve got a mountain to climb’ – usually a reference to one or two goals conceded to a stronger team. In 1924 George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Everest said, ‘Because it’s there’; and another cliche was born.
Today in New Zealand, at the State funeral service for Sir Edmund Hillary, a tribute was paid by a representative of the Sherpa communities in Nepal. Following the conquest of Everest, Sir Edmund raised funds for schools, hospitals, bridges and other important social developments amongst these people. After a moving reference to Sir Edmund as a second father, the Sherpa representative said, ‘our loss is as great, and as heavy, as Mount Everest’. From those who live in the vast shadow and magnificent mass of Everest, the tribute carried an enormous weight of affection, respect and admiration. There is indeed something mountainous, vastly and reassuringly solid, about a great man, whose greatness was never self-proclaimed. It was articulated by others who recognised in him extraordinary strength of character and vast reservoirs of patient, compassionate concern for this planet and all of us who live here.
The comparison of Sir Edmund Hillary with the mountain he climbed and conquered, but forever respected, is one of those metaphors whose effectiveness borrows from the familiarity of the image. Everest is unique; the highest peak on the planet, a symbol of all that is beautiful, enduring, challenging and humbling, providing eyes and minds are clear enough to recognise what such a mountain means; human longing set in stone.
Rabindranath Tagore wrote ‘The mountain remains unmoved / at its seeming defeat by the mist’.Once again words from one who had gazed on the gigantic permanence of mountains, the ephemeral beauty of mist, and who knew the things that last. 
Sir Edmund Hillary was a great man, in a world now more familiar with celebrity, perhaps because it’s more user friendly; he was a man of substance and character, in a world fixated on image and personality; he was a man who long before live-aid and all the subsequent generations of collective media driven charity, made it his business to make life better for a little known people who lived in the shadow of Everest. Mist shrouds the mountain – but soon enough it evaporates, and what’s left is just as solid and great, and remains reassuringly there. The death of Sir Edmund Hillary diminishes all of us, consigns living greatness to the mists of memory; and for his beloved Sherpas, his death takes away one who was always reassuringly, there.
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