As soon as you head out on the road up to Mount Cook (not forgetting to stop at Peter's Lookout on the way) and should the weather be good enough you will be able to see this vast mountain stretched out in front of you.
From the Corniche, you can see the landscape of Beirut, and the mountains stretching out beyond.
Siberia is a huge Russian expanse that extends eastwards from the Ural mountains, stretching from the Arctic Ocean to the borders of China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan.
There were other places, with mountains stretching their backs under a cloudless sky, and coyotes and pines and eagles no doubt, and moonshine to be drunk.
Each time we climbed a peak we were rewarded with another breathtaking view of distant mountains, stretching for miles, rich red or soft, shadowy grey, depending on the position of the sun.
The breathtaking shark-tooth vista of the Wasatch mountains stretching as far as the eye can see is a reminder that the Salt Lake region is a proper winter wonderland, half an hour's drive from many of the best ski resorts in the world.
All that climbing had taken me up to a clearing in a forest, a clearing that offered views of wooded hills all around, of fields dotted with sheep and, most spectacularly, an unbroken vista of mountains stretching out to the distance, a mass of white houses that must, I thought, be Pollença, and a valley.
So this time, I can survey all the mountains, stretching back to the morning in 1978 when I first walked up the court's marble steps — mistakenly, as it turned out, because people with business at the court actually use a less majestic but more practical side entrance at ground level.
At a spot known as World's End, the plain suddenly drops off altogether and the view opens up through the mountains, stretching down 900m to the verdant tea plantations below, on clear days even revealing a sliver of the Indian Ocean 160km away — each geographical element of this remarkably diverse island suddenly lined up together.
