Mountaintops are magical! Great rocky spires grasping heavenward, preferred abode of ancient gods, sublime views, stunning terrain and then the surrounding wilderness, unchanged by human hand.
It explains why millions have struggled to reach elusive summits, and thousands have died in the process - doesn't it?
Well, not really. Few summits are in themselves worth such striving, let alone dying. And in any case, Irish mountaintops do not belong in this category. Classic pyramids in the style of the Matterhorn or the Cuillins they are not.
Mostly they consist of rounded peaks with inhospitable flattened tops, which are, cold, windy and eroded.
As often as not, mist obscures the wished-for view, while on popular peaks the remains of TV dinners and coke bottles remind us that hill-walking is unfortunately no longer the preserve of minimalists.
Those whose vision of mountain highs is informed by the classic paintings of the romantic period are almost bound for disappointment on their first summit. Usually it is not the weather or the unforgiving terrain which spoils the romance, but the work of man.
You see, our mountaintops are now cluttered places. There are trig points, sculptures, masts, ancient tombs, crosses, altars, towers, huts, deflector systems and, of course, the ubiquitous cairns.
The historic, the aesthetic, the commercial and the spiritual jostle for the psychological dominance offered by the highest summits.
Simply put, wilderness, when defined as "landscape unaltered by human intervention", exists nowhere on this island.
Every landscape, from brook to beach, mountain to marsh, hedge to heath, is shaped by human exploitation.
Thus climbers, whose efforts pursue the dream of a last remaining summit wilderness, are necessarily but perhaps unreasonably disappointed.
Would our mountains be in some way better if preserved in their pristine primitiveness? Probably not. A booley in a high place tells a story of past human struggle - a deserted farmhouse on a mountainside informs of a struggle lost. The legends, the megalithic tombs, the bridle paths and dry stone walls are not incongruous intrusions but monuments to how we have used our mountains.
Politically, economically or spiritually - depending on perceived need - the powerful symbolism of mountains has been exploited historically to support and bind communities.
These days, however, we affect a somewhat more supercilious attitude towards the concept of multi-purpose mountains. A common view holds that the uplands have one purpose only - to act as recreational playgrounds.
The National Trust of Scotland has, for example, a policy of maintaining all of its mountains in their "primitive" (pre-human) condition and in so far as possible disallowing all but recreational use.
The bare, unpopulated mountains of Scotland consequently offer a certain appeal, but for most of us who regularly take groups on the Irish hills, it is the evidence of past human influence, which spices our journey. Glenary in the Comeraghs is one of my favourites, not because it is wild and unvisited, but because it was much visited and part tamed by human habitation with the fascinating evidence still all around.
So why bother with conservation, if the ugly deflector masts of today will transform in time to communicational swans, providing future fascination for walkers yet unborn?
The difference lies with degree. Past human influence altered but did not threaten the delicate upland ecosystem. Our forefathers struggled heroically to slightly tame our mountains and what little they achieved was hard won. With much less effort we have, today, the power to irreversibly alter the balance of nature.
With intensive grazing, fencing and access on four-wheel drive roadways, we can make neat pastureland from mountain wilderness. Untrammeled modern technology ranged against our mountains is no longer a fair struggle, it's a turkey shoot, and at our ease we can eliminate much upland environment.
The International Year of the Mountain 2002 offers a good excuse to bag a summit or two.
Of course, climbing uphill is an unaccustomed and singular struggle, no matter how we romanticise it, just as it was an unromantic but accustomed struggle for our forefathers. Today, the value lies not in the summit gained, or even with the view - which considering Irish weather is always a bonus - but in the effort itself and our empathy with the surroundings as we ascend.
From the top we will gaze upon the influence of past generations and are reminded that these interventions never aspired to improve on creation.
Our challenge is to resist the understandable temptation to play God, forever compromising the uplands and instead adopt a long-term sustainable approach, giving for a healthy interaction between humans and hills.
John O'Dwyer is a hillwalker and mountain leader