WaveLength magazine Aug/Sep '00

The religion of wilderness adventure

Tim on the summit of Temple Mountain, Lake Louise

Five years ago I enrolled in grad school and embarked on an unfamiliar kind of wilderness journey—an intellectual one. I wrote a notice in WaveLength asking for interview volunteers. Three years later, I published a massive thesis: Living the Religion of Wilderness Adventure: The Wilderness Recreation Experience and Everyday Life.

The people I interviewed recounted powerful experiences in wild places, moments not necessarily of clear weather, but of brilliantly clear vision: quiet, lonely sunsets; meditative instances when thoughts are washed away in contemplation of surf; spectacular mountain summit days; bobbing in a kayak on supernatural swell.

At such times, we become aware of something beyond and including ourselves, but much greater. We turn to face the wind as it comes out of the horizon and rises up off the water, sit in a pine tree and feel it sway, paddle all day drawing on deep reserves of strength beyond the physical, and rest in the radiant heat of water-worn rock. The routines that sustain us are inseparable threads of the experience; there is no drudgery, only “enoughness” and time. Here is life in purest simplicity, representing all that we wish and strive for—deep happiness attuned to beauty, asking for just the miracle of what is infinitely given, moment by moment. One person said of such a time, “I had instilled in myself certain values which really defined who I am as a person, and that stick with me to this day.”

If your values, talents, ambitions and beliefs are rooted in your time “out there”, under the stars, sleeping on the ground, waking up to plunge into cold water, the smell of woodsmoke, the feel of sun-on-skin and the rhythm of living and moving in paddle-time, then wilderness experience is your religion—your life’s inspiration and focus.

Barry Lopez writes, “The land gets inside us; and we must decide one way or another what this means, what we will do about it.”

What does our love affair with wilderness mean for home life, the world of work and routine? Can I prescribe a way of living that will keep the inspiration of the wilderness experience alive from day to day—a “wildly religious” way?

The once-predominant form of human culture was embedded within “wilderness” known only as home, and wholly sacred. Everyday existence may have been like the mindset one has on a long wilderness trip today.

We are as much a part of this wilderness now; even our cities are a part of it. But we have defined ourselves as separate from nature, and removed much evidence of wildness from our lives—sanitizing our living environments, pulling dandelions, paving cities, wearing deodorant and eating processed food—that we need to go into “wilderness” to remember what lies behind our artificially constructed reality.

The poet Robinson Jeffers advises, “One light is left us: the beauty of things, not men; the immense beauty of the world, not the human world. Look—and without imagination, desire nor dream—directly at the mountains and the sea.”

Thoreau followed this light, finding a guiding principle in “wildness”. He said we should “awake” to the reality beyond the “mud and slush” of civilization, and be liberated. We see the work of the forces that created us, and so glimpse what exists beyond us, independent of us. At the same time, we find freedom from social conventions and constraints, from the limiting, rational type of thinking that rules our civilization.

We see, in Edward Abbey’s terms, “a world that is not a projection of human consciousness.” This vision frees us from the prevailing illusions that our culture has cemented into its built landscapes and media. Going into wilderness is a sacred journey, Alan Drengson says, to “the source of our being, the past and present root power of our lives.”

Psychological states of “flow” and ritual, variations in the earth’s magnetic field, the intoxicating effects of altitude, the presence of anti-depressant substances in drinking water, or the coincidence of atmospheric ionization with storms, waterfalls, seashores and mountain summits are all possible explanations of spiritual wilderness experience. Similar states of mind appear in long-distance running, Zen meditation, yoga retreats, and other activities. But wilderness experience cannot be “replaced”, or taken in pill form. There is “something more” to the actual experience with its varied sensations and vastness that makes it ineffably greater than any amount of yogic flying, marathoning, bongo drumming, pure chemical highs or rock climbing. We need immersion in the non-human world!

As one enthusiast told me, “I just don’t find anything in an urban area that gives me that feeling of being able to recharge myself and fulfill any sort of spiritual need I would have, and that combination of being able to feel mentally and physically really connected to everything around me.”

Wilderness teaches a way of relating to reality, a posture vis-à-vis the world. There are times of misery, fear, hardship and discomfort—nights alone under a cold sky, dreaming of home—often at the beginning of each journey when we are wrenched out of a comfortable routine and required to face challenge and risk. In time, we come to trust our own judgement, and to love and trust that larger reality over which we have no control and ultimately determines our fate. Without the power to change the weather, or the landscape, we learn to, in Lopez’s words, “achieve congruence with a reality that is already given.” We are required to be open—in an attitude resembling constant prayer—to accept. And in return we find immediate, deep satisfaction in just being.

After school, I returned to my passion, singing Jeffers: “I will touch things and things and no more thoughts, that breed like mouthless mayflies darkening the sky.” I paddled for 25 days this spring, alone from Victoria through the Discovery Islands to Desolation Sound. Leaving behind the 430 thesis pages and half a decade of academic questioning about wilderness, I returned to the root experience that contains answers to all the questions I had ever asked.

Primarily, I learned that if we love wilderness, we should experience it. Be, like the eighteenth-century Romantic poets, more passionate than intellectual in pursuit and defense of the direct experience of nature. The openness and humble courage with which we approach the wild in our tiny watercraft: this attitude we should bring to our lives at home. Success is keeping close enough to wilderness to remember that the “wild way of being” is a far more effective path to happiness than the notions of material progress so strongly nurtured in us; it shows us a better, more permanent way of life. The wilderness experience rejuvenates us, sustains our souls, and replenishes the spiritual energy that allows us to shoulder daily challenges with equanimity.

The best answer I found is that we should go into wilderness and share it with others. Let the practical meaning of the inspiration we find there—“what we will do about it”—-be traced behind us, by the way that we choose to live.

Tim Shuff is a student of the great outdoors ©

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