"Because it's there."

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- Mountaineer George Mallory's famous and famously male and dumb explanation of why he felt the need to try to climb Mt Everest.

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Arriving early at church last Sunday for that afternoon's special Anzac concert there, I took the opportunity to kneel and thank God (in the unlikely event of Him existing) for the myriad blessings showered upon this federal capital city.

This time my thanks included thanks for the refreshingly leftish ACT political career of MLA Shane Rattenbury and especially for his pivotal role in bestowing the blessing of light rail upon our city.

Mr Rattenbury has just announced his withdrawal from the apparently draining hurly-burly of the action-packed Legislative Assembly. As I write, the public conversation of Canberra, including and especially the Letters pages of this newspaper, is fuming with the usual miserabilists' angry accusations that Rattenbury's "legacy" is the allegedly territory-impoverishing Great Satan of light rail.

A gratefulist myself, I've always enthused over light rail. And not only for all the metrosensible, quality-of-city-life reasons all thinking citizens have for encouraging public transport but also for the delight it gives. Our trams, so space-age modern-looking, so whisper-quiet, so thrillingly, cheerfully red, add a 21st century lustre and gaiety to Canberra's life and times.

And while already at prayer I thanked God for blessing me with enough moral and mental health to have never had the slightest interest in climbing Mt Everest.

A better species than ours would have found Everest sacred and would have left it alone, admiring it from a respectful distance.

The dear mountain is in the news as I write because a timely avalanche is thwarting the warped ambitions........

© Canberra Times