We need the tonic of wildness--to wade sometimes in marshes where
the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to
smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds
her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same
time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all
things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild,
unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough
of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and
Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living
and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks
and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some
life pasturing freely where we never wander... Henry David Thoreau
In the coffee shop where I
write, everything around me is inert, static. Only people move, interact and
set things in motion. ‘Inexhaustible vigor’ is nowhere in sight. Nothing is
‘mysterious and unexplorable.’ Nor is there ‘life pasturing freely.’ By contrast, as Thoreau details, wildness is dynamic. Life howls, hoots, slithers, flies,
grows, climbs, spawns, decays, blooms, burrows, germinates, preys and on and
on.
Too much time in human made
settings however causes us to fear what we ourselves didn’t fabricate.
Horror films capitalize on this, tainting natural settings with a menacing hue; all that howling and slithering imbued with sinister intent.
Too much time in humanoid
settings also causes us to forget we live, move and have our being in a world
other than the one we’ve constructed. We forget our lives are inexorably intertwined
with wild Otherness, from bee to forest to sea.
A pastor once described communion as re-membering; as in putting back together, reuniting people with God through ritual. Wildness reminds me I am a part of rather than apart from dynamic exuberant life all around. I remember I am adamah, of the earth, a mammal only as robust as the air, water and soil that sustain me. It is a humbling, clarifying tonic to know, deep in my bones know, my wellbeing is completely dependent on the well being of all creation. It is also an empowering tonic because the breadth and depth of my impact, good or ill, extends beyond other living creatures.
A pastor once described communion as re-membering; as in putting back together, reuniting people with God through ritual. Wildness reminds me I am a part of rather than apart from dynamic exuberant life all around. I remember I am adamah, of the earth, a mammal only as robust as the air, water and soil that sustain me. It is a humbling, clarifying tonic to know, deep in my bones know, my wellbeing is completely dependent on the well being of all creation. It is also an empowering tonic because the breadth and depth of my impact, good or ill, extends beyond other living creatures.
In wild places I ease off the
burden of myself, the incessant chorus of needs-contrived, true, petty and
fleeting-which preoccupy me. Thus freed, I encounter Otherness not through a screen or from a God
box complete with childcare and relevant programming. Here is Otherness on its own terms, unfiltered, unscripted, unpackaged and certainly not advertised to appeal to my
demographic.
Yes, I am ‘earnest to explore
and learn all things.’ But I have a deeper hunger for mystery, for the
‘unfathomable’, for awe, for communion with Otherness unmarred by a humanoid
agenda. Including my own.
I suspect we all do.
I suspect we all do.
