If the forest is the realm of wild thought, the mountain is where human beings encounter what lies beyond the narrow circle of everyday life. From the meadows where shepherds lead their flocks to broken cliffs inhabited by giants or ascetics, along dangerous paths that rise as close as one can come to the heavens and the brilliance of innumerable stars, it is often upon the summit that the hero seeks counsel, objects of power or the magical flower that will restore life to the land.

The mountain dominates a vast horizon that everyone can see but few have ever walked. In popular tradition it belongs more to the divine than to humankind. Remote and inaccessible to the physical body, mountains may nevertheless form part of the shared landscape of marginal communities, places to which people travel every night in dreams to dance in freedom.