I make it a practice to spend some time alone walking, exploring, or just sitting and observing in the wilderness every day. You might think that’s not too hard to do given that I live in the middle of it, but you know how it goes: what’s the “easiest” to get done, what’s readily accessible often gets taken for granted and put off for another day. “What’s missing one day gonna’ hurt, eh?”
So I’ve intentionally made it a discipline because I’ve learned that consistency often results in a whole that is much greater than the sum of haphazard parts. Experiences build upon experiences and connections arise in unexpected places. You begin to notice relationships that are invisible to the casual passerby. In the longer run you realize that individual details and observations weave together to form a rich, endlessly fascinating tapestry of stories with no conclusion, only more chapters and increasingly complex, interrelated sub-plots. You begin to see how Nature works, the genius, the beauty, the perfection of it all… and eventually, the genius, perfection and beauty of your Self, just as you are, just as Nature intended, just as Nature created you.
(Continued)
…And so I set out to reconnect with my land, to re-establish the intimate relationship I once had. For a while I wondered how but I’ve been out there enough to know that such questions are irrelevant in the wilds. “How” is of the false, disconnected world of man where logic and laws rule, where the doing and the “getting it done” prevail. But in Nature, as I’d soon relearn, what counts most is to be. Not to strive but to be present.
I took my cue from the obvious realities of Life, trusting that reconnection should be easy because essentially it’s our nature as creatures of the planet. You can no more be removed from the web of life than your heart or liver can be disconnected from the rest of your body and still function. If you’re breathing, you’re part of it… for it is breathing you as well. Reconnection is natural and instinctual because as a child of the earth, consciously or unconsciously you yearn for the land as the land yearns for you. There can be no other way for without the land you are nothing.
(Continued)
When I first moved to my little house in the Sangres I fell in love with this land, wandering about in awe of the natural beauty and gratitude for having finally found a place I could call home. But eventually my travels took me into the desert, canyon country, and suddenly everywhere else I’d ever been paled by comparison.
My personal slice of paradise took a backseat. This place, set far back and bordering wilderness, this land of clean air, clean water, where bears sniff and scratch at my door, where deer and turkeys meander through on their way to wherever it is that turkeys and dear meander toward, where cougars stalk in the night and stealthy coyotes lay claim to my gate with little mounds of territorial coyote-poo, where the occasional ringtail cat swings from a suet feeder under the cover of night, where ravens, redtail hawks and the rare bald eagle soar overhead and where on a clear day I can see for a thousand miles and watch the sun set the snowy peaks of the Sangres aflame in brilliant golden-orange had grown “boring” for me, no longer “it.” I stopped paying attention. I fell out of love.
(Continued)
I’ll never learn. How many times have I gone on “just a short hike, no need to carry much” only to find myself miles from camp, lured farther and deeper into wilderness by this faint voice beckoning me to trek “just a little bit more, just around this next bend, just over this next hill, just far enough to see what’s beyond”? Obviously not enough times to get into serious trouble but the numbers could soon catch up…
Camp is in a dry wash just off a jeep trail where this complex of canyons starts to get interesting. This isn’t the slick redrock canyon I’m familiar with but fragile, crumbly dry sandstone and shale, hundreds of jagged, broken layers in varying shades of yellow and red and brown, depending on the depth. Flat water-smoothed shards of shale cover the bed, like a blanket of ancient stone coins. I listen to erosion’s story told in the rock; it speaks of gentle flow, not violent flooding. It’s safe to camp here.
(Continued)
I head west, deeper into the Swell, to where I don’t yet know. I’ll figure it out when I get there, wherever “there” turns out to be, wherever these dusty unmarked roads lead, wherever the lure of the unknown pulls me. Fifteen miles in I’ve passed no one, seen none but one truck perched atop a lonely ridge to the south early in the drive, the only hint of humanity I’ve witnessed in four… or is it five?… however many days. The eastern faces of buttes marking a series of canyons emerges in the horizon. My eyes grow wide, so wide for so long that only the sting of dehydration snaps me back into my body with an overdue blink. Parched monoliths of red, pink and beige stone dotted with green specks under a dome of flawless lapis lazuli beckon. Mesmerized, I pull over atop the final rise before this road descends into the geological labyrinth below.
I want to record this breathless moment, to bring this place back with me to share with others, but words fail. There are none. How might a speck of dust describe a mountain? I don’t know what it is about places like this that calls to me so. What the heartless, the uninspired and passionless, the ranchers, exploiters and developers, the men who bore holes into Her flesh to steal and package and squander and sell her blood and precious innards, what dead souls driven exclusively by economics would call a “wasteland” is to me, paradise.
(Continued)
Evening creeps silently over the desert, the long shadows of sunset unfurled and settled upon the land like a cool blanket. No perceptible movement, not a sound save the rhythmic chirp of some distant cricket, its particular direction masked and muffled by waves of captured heat radiating off the rock. I’ve had a day of exploring, destinations in mind, but now it’s time to walk… just walk… without purpose, without intention, just to be here, just to be a part of this place.
When there’s nowhere to get to you can truly become present to where you are.
(Continued)
I figured on leaving the first of August, on my birthday. That was the plan. But my plans consistently fail to account for the fact that I’m the world’s biggest procrastinator and that a departure date tends to loom not so much a goal but as a target to be deliberately avoided, for what reason I can’t imagine, other than perhaps to maintain my identity as a procrastinator. For all I know, the earth might shift off its axis and tumble into oblivion were I to make it out as planned. Don’t mess with the order of things, I say; best not to tempt fate with such craziness. So it’s the third of August and I’m off.
The date’s irrelevant. What matters is that I’m on the road for thirty days. No specific plans, just drive and explore through Utah, Nevada, up the coast of Oregon, into Portland for a spell and then head home… I need to shake things up; I’m stagnating, falling into routine, taking too much for granted. Thirty days of the unfamiliar, away from routines, a string of small, possibly large adventures is just what I need right now.
(Continued)
Obstacles aren’t always roadblocks. Sometimes they’re detours into mystery leading down unexpected paths. Recently I’d had a hard time getting out to canyon country. Bags packed, dogs with the sitter, I was ready to go solo, deeper into the canyons than ever. Then my water well blew out; three days for repairs. Then a water fitting in my camper broke. Another delay, another day lost. And by the time I was finally ready, the weather report called for days of rain. Odd that water, of all things, should keep me out of the desert. But meteorology be damned! There’s exploring to be done…
Off the highway, over the cattle guard and onto an old dirt road winding towards a canyon I’d discovered on a previous trip… Mud everywhere, truck slipping and sliding in sticky ochre mess. I’d never seen this place so wet, never witnessed this particular mood of Hers. I set up base camp atop a slab of redrock where an old mining road intersects a slot canyon camouflaged by a short stretch of level terrain. Beyond the cottonwoods lies a hidden gem I’d briefly surveyed on a previous expedition, a marvel of red, orange, pink and yellow rock, narrow chutes, expansive atriums, slickrock walls weaved with bands of impossible colors and layers of texture, too small to be noted or named on any map, yet immense in the scope of its beauty.
(Continued)
Lots of rattlers (Western rattlesnake, Crotalus viridis) in the high desert this spring. I hadn’t seen nary a one in years but have already run into two within as many days this season. Not to mention the twisty, windy tracks on nearby dirt roads. I can’t be sure it’s rattlesnake sign (there are other snakes in this area as well) but I’d bet so. Every rattler I’ve seen up here has been traveling in the same general vicinity and the same general direction so I’m assuming there must be a den in the rocky slope behind my cabin. Hopefully I’ll find it during one of my explorations. (Continued)
We’re not a graceful species. Top-heavy, unbalanced, stuffed to the gills with brain matter and intelligence, living upstairs, in our heads, disconnected from our bodies and whence they came. Clunky shoes to protect our feet, clothing to seal out the elements, sunglasses to block the light… ham-fisted and heavy-footed we plod through the wilds totally insulated from the very experience we seek.
Witness deer gliding through the forest and you will hear nothing. Watch a human and you will hear little else. We announce our presence to the wild things long before our arrival and all the critters, save for a handful of birds scurry off in our wake. The mysteries and the magic seek cover, replaced by a curtain of the unknown and unperceived, mere camouflage for the esoteric and extraordinary. It is only in silence and stillness that the mysteries are coaxed out from behind the shadows to play in the light of awareness, beckoning those who tread lightly, those who have earned the right through humility and respect to join the dance. It’s not that we don’t belong in the wilds; it’s just that we’ve forgotten how to be there.
(Continued)
