Epilogue

This chapter emphasizes how intersections of scientific, aesthetic, economic, and material interests in early mountain climbing across nations and continents furthers the understanding of the development of sensual, place-based attachments. It proposes a new environmental culture that would renegotiate concepts of autonomy and freedom. It also reflects on the experiences of early mountaineers that become amplified in the Anthropocene, in which people become victims rather than masters of nature in the face of climate change's destructive floods, devastating fires, and droughts. The chapter investigates place attachment as a means of fostering environmental awareness that relates to the theories of Merleau–Ponty, who posed that the sense of orientation develops in relationship to the surroundings. It also explains how perception always involves movement in the world, as it is embedded in the bodily motor capacities of the senses.