ward patterson

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Excursus: Patterson's Climb 4

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Roped together, we move slowly. That drop-off to our right is more ominous by the minute. Fortunately the sky is still clear. The glare makes my face feel like it is sizzling on a griddle. At last we are past the place of danger, above the first hump. Now all that remains is that last hump. We catch a glimpse of a spike or cross or something that marks the top, just before the wind picks up and the clouds suddenly enclose us.  Everything is now obscured.

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Excursus: Patterson's Climb 2

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“And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.”

The “mountains of Ararat”? Is it not rather the mountain of Ararat? This 17,000 foot peak on which I now labor, is it not marked Mt. Ararat on my excellent British Bartholomew map? 

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Excursus: Patterson's Climb 1

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I return to my office to contemplate the document, “An Ascent of Ararat,” by Ward Patterson. Ward spent a decade between the late 1950s and late 1960s traveling Asia. In that decade, he logged some 65,000 miles on the road, visited 40 countries and exhausted at least three motorcycles. Later, he served as a campus minister at Indiana University and professor at Cincinnati Christian University.

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Excursus: An Accidental Discovery

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I climb the stairs from my office to the George Mark Elliot Library on the campus of Cincinnati Christian University. I am on a hunt. There is a rare (and ancient) word that has escaped the tools near my desk; this one requires the big muscles of the reference section.