Tag Archives: wilderness

What You’ll Find Will Be Wonderful

12 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by in Wildness

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“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.  What you’ll find will be wonderful.  What you will find is yourself.” ~Alan Alda

It’s scary.  To live in the way my heart pulls me, to live in a way society has taught me is not possible.

It’s scarier not to.  The confining expectations that come from a world where the only growth that matters is economic.

My heart pounds, my breath calms, my legs propel me through the field, past the stream, into the forest where steadiness and creation are always in play.

I want to live in a world where trees are more valuable than money, where richness is determined by the depth of humus, the reach of roots, and the stretch of limbs and leaves toward the sky.

How do I do this?

I’m not completely sure yet.  But I’m going to the wilderness~

Alaska Wild

10 Sunday Oct 2010

Posted by in Alaska, Nature/Environment, Wildness

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My summer of light is over.  The moon has returned to the northern sky.  In August I woke two nights in a row between 1:30 and 3:00 am and walked outside to darkness—or what darkness meant then, the deeper end of dusk—and looked up to see the moon shining like golden cream, my favorite light extending in a circle across the sky.  In my last days on the farm at the end of September, it was 9:30 pm and navy blue, it was 11:00 pm and black, it was nighttime and starry.

When school got back in session on August 18th, I started teaching classes in the garden.  One day while on a break, I heard a teacher in the faculty lounge say, “Fall is my favorite time of year because it’s dark enough to see the stars again and still warm enough to stay outside to look at them.”  All of my life I have loved summer nights for the stars and moon, and it still amazes me that people can live for months on end without this and see it as normal, but I did learn to love the unending light and all its energy.  Alaska’s nighttime has a way of breaking open, boldly renewing the world for the second time in twenty-four hours.

Now, after six months and with the return of night, I am driving home to Vermont with my friend Katie, who flew to Fairbanks to make the month-long journey back with me.  Throughout the summer I felt the pull towards the east, to know the soils, roots, rivers and mountains of my home more deeply, but Alaska draws me in now, quietly like the sway of wind in trees, like the slow then quick brilliant change from green to red in the tundra.  The wild here moves everyday across the land and sky; it knows its beauty and harshness and is calm in it.

When I first arrived in Alaska I wondered if the cities and people infringe upon or accentuate the wild, and what I have found is this: the wild is where the moose and lynx cross the paved road and keep going; it is where I take the road and then leave it.  Wild is found in the meetings of animals and people, and in the moments that hold stares without thoughts—that moment before you take out the camera and you watch, looking at each other with curiosity and wonder before going again on your own path.  Wild is everything and it is everywhere.  As I drive across the country now I see the wild extend through Canada, and down into Montana where I am now, and I know it keeps going, and I will follow it.

Grapefruit Rocks and a Slice of Fatman

18 Sunday Apr 2010

Posted by in Alaska, Travel

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After two weeks of being in Fairbanks I finally left the city area and drove north to go rock climbing.  It was the first warm and sunny weekend, with the temperature up in the 50s, and just feeling the sun was enough to make me smile.  I had been wanting to explore beyond the city limits, so when I heard Edge was going climbing, I asked to go along.

The hour drive brought us to an area called Grapefruit Rocks and the Twin Towers, which are large tors rising up from the side of mountains.  Along the way Edge pointed out farms tucked behind trees and hidden from the view of the road, and we shared stories of our travels, his to Mexico and mine to New Zealand.  “I found that I like slow travel best, and I like getting to really know a place instead of checking things off a list so I can say I saw it,” I said, and he agreed.  Edge is going into his fourth year living in Ester, and he said, “There are some places I haven’t climbed, but I really like the area we’re going to today, and I discover something new each time I go there.”  The value of a place is rarely found in a quick glance, but it is learned through observation, awareness, and the willingness to listen and sink into the land without the rush of time.

When we arrived at the first crag, I warmed up on an easy 30-foot route and free-climbed to the top.  I didn’t start out with the intention to go all the way up, but as my hands found holds, my shoes stuck to the rock, and my body remembered the way to move, I kept going.  When I got to the top I said, “That wasn’t as scary as I thought it’d be!”  Edge shouted up, “That’s the perfect answer!”  It felt like springtime all morning, with snow on the ground but sun in the sky, and we climbed at the Grapefruit rocks until they were covered in shade, then drove down the road to another pull-off and hiked up to the Twin Towers.  The steep walk up to the tors warmed us up again, and it felt like summer as we rolled up our pants and took off upper-layers to climb in t-shirts.  Surprisingly, we ran into two other climbing pairs, which Edge told me is rare up here, and I thought of climbing at the Gunks in New Paltz, NY, and how the rocks are swarmed each weekend there.  Alaska is so big, though, and being the only one at a climbing area is common up here.

For most of the day Edge practiced lead climbing and I followed to clean up the gear.  As we looked through guide book (which is only about 40 pages long) to decide which climb to do next, I noticed the ratings and said I’d try a 5.6 to 5.8, but I wasn’t sure how I’d do on a 5.9.  “We’ve been climbing 5.9s all day!” Edge said, and he assured me I could do some more.  I was surprised but said, “I guess when I just go for it and don’t think about the rating, than I don’t stop myself from doing it.  I think I like not knowing what the climb is rated!”

The clouds set in and the wind picked up for our last few climbs, and it felt like the season had shifted to fall.  When I checked the time as we cleaned up the gear from our last climb, I expected it to be around 5:30 based on the amount of light, but my watch read 8:30 pm.  That’s one of the things I love about climbing—time falls away and I am totally in the moment, body and mind in harmony with the rock.  As the days get longer, though, the amount of light makes me forget time all together, and I wonder how much sleep I’ll get this summer.

We stopped at a truck stop/restaurant on the way back and ordered slices of pie called the fatman: a pecan butter crust with a layer of cream cheese, then a chocolate cream filling, then an inch of whipped cream sprinkled with chocolate chips and drizzled chocolate sauce.  It was enormous.  It was delicious!  When I finally arrived back home around 10:30, dusk had really settled in, and I fell asleep tired and happy.

Wildness, Wilderness: What is Wild?

10 Wednesday Feb 2010

Posted by in Nature/Environment, Wildness, Writing

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I’ve been thinking about wildness lately.  What does it mean?  One of the most famous (and misquoted) Thoreau quotes is “in wildness in the preservation of the world.”  Many people confuse wildness for wilderness here–but what are we missing when we think that wild is only in the wilderness?  William Cronon’s essay The Trouble With Wilderness addresses the problems inherent in the way Americans view untouched forest and mountains.  We essentially separate ourselves from nature, seeing wilderness as a place of escape rather than as a part of the landscape we inhabit.  The entire English language is filled with different ways to voice separation.  Sometimes I find it impossible to think in words while trying to fuse together nature and the human society I am a part of (see, even in this sentence I imply that they are two separate things, rather than part of the same whole).

In The Abstract Wild, Jack Turner dissects Thoreau’s statement.  Upon establishing Thoreau’s interpretation of wild as “self-willed” and his view of the world based in the Greek word for beauty or order, Turner concludes that Thoreau’s quote “is about the relation of free, self-willed, and self-determinate ‘things’ with the harmonious order of the cosmos” (82).  Part of wildness is that harmony is formed by both destruction and creation, and sometimes order grows from chaos.

Do we need to be wilder in order to preserve the world?  If we are to reconcile the imbalance between the human and natural society, and if we are to meld the two together, then perhaps we do.  Turner goes on to say, “To create a wilder self, the self must live the life of the wild, mold a particular form of human character, a form of life…If we want this wilder self, we must begin, in whatever ways we can imagine, to rejoin the natural world” (91).

Many people tend to see themselves as a part from rather than a part of the natural environment, but rarely is nature viewed with antipathy.  On the contrary, there is a tangible romanticism in the way wilderness is described.  Even though we are past the Manifest Destiny era, we still want to believe the west is wild, the land is endless, and there will always be open space for us to run to, if we ever find the time.

So my question is this: how do we find the time, and how do we learn to see the workings of a vegetable garden with the same wonder as we see national parks, because wild lives not only in untouched wilderness, but also in each sweet basil leaf and strawberry blossom.  If we can answer this question, we can erase the void our society has built between people and nature, and live in the harmony of wildness that Thoreau wrote about.  The amazing thing about finding a solution is that mine may not be the same as yours, but our own ways of walking can still lead us to the same place.  My journey to wildness leads me outside, into the garden, covering my hands with soil and watching a seed fall from my fingertips, find its way into the earth, open and shoot up, and eventually sustain me.  My journey also leads me to the forest where streams wind through birch, maple, and beech trees; to cold, dark lakes in Vermont and the Adirondacks; and to my front yard where a 90-year-old maple lends a branch to a swing and lets me fly.

In wildness is the preservation of the world and of yourself, for the two are inextricably intertwined.  The important thing isn’t knowing the answer right away, but letting yourself delve into the adventure of finding it.