For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite. –Leo Tolstoy
I spent most of the last few weeks traveling and teaching. I interacted with more people in just the last month than I likely had during the entire rest of the year, which was not an easy feat for a consummate introvert. One consolation for such a busy stretch is that it usually culminates in a palpable and rewarding calmness – a mental sigh of relief – to be alone again in my small office, with my beloved views and music and writing.
As I often do when away from home, I recorded many short notes and reminders – ideas and seeds and significant musings that I plan to think and write about in the winter months ahead.
This may seem a strange admission, but one of the realizations brought on by being out in the world is that I feel I have arrived at an awkward spot where too many people know my name. It is ironic that despite my ongoing efforts to distance myself from the mass of humanity, some degree of fame still is needed in order to do what I do. I spent much of my life gradually removing myself from the manufactured worlds of fashions and advertisements and television and politics and careers and consumerism and celebrity, and I am, admittedly, struggling to find a balance. I fully admit that I often wish for anonymity, and that I am most at peace when I am alone in wilderness.
It occurs to me that in the minds of some I am a working professional artist, owner and manager of a business, with plans for growth, marketing strategies or entrepreneurial aspirations. In truth, I am only some of those things, and only to a limited extent (likely a lesser one than most would guess). In reality I am a desert wanderer, a lifestyle laborer, a creative opportunist driven by an unquenchable thirst for the beauty, peace, awe, reverence and mysteries inspired by the wild. Business is just a means of making possible my living as I do and my wilderness wanderings, and I engage in it with some reluctance. For many years I tried to be a gainfully employed suburbanite; at times I even tried evolving allegiances to organizations, parties and countries; I tried caring about such things as television shows, sports, cars, technology trends and various incarnations of tribalism, but alas could never truly elevate them in my mind to levels beyond trivial, or to think of them as more than bothersome requisites for various social functions. Try as I might, however, I am not that person and cannot convincingly pretend to be. I was a child who roamed the fields in solitude, and was happy; and I began to live again as an adult the day I decided to stop lying to myself about the possibility of finding happiness and meaning in my endeavors living by any other creed. It is why I am an advocate for the preservation of wilderness, although likely not for the same reasons that so many others are (or are not).
These thoughts were inspired by recent celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, as well as some well-written essays on the topic, such as this post by Wesley Picotte. With some notable exceptions, however, I find it lamentable that so many nature writers generally pick one of three well-trodden paths in their writings about wilderness – platitude-rich narratives about inspiration and spirituality, dry regurgitation of facts signifying the material importance of natural ecosystems, or fiery rhetoric laced with doomsday predictions and political mudslinging. Each, in its way, makes the issue of preservation easy to dismiss by those seeking reasons to do so. And so, I’d like to start with a statement that may be difficult to swallow but cuts across all arguments: wilderness is not important. It is important to us for one reason alone: because we, also, are not important. In the brief blink of existence that we are each given, to be conscious, living, beings on the surface of a clump of dust we call Earth, such concepts as importance, meaning and significance are never singular nor universal; they are perceptions we get to ascribe to things and to places if we so choose (or are sufficiently suggestible to accept unquestionably the choices of others) and for our own reasons. And so, rather than try to convince you that there is but one way to think or feel or act regarding wilderness, I think it may be both more honest and more productive to share with you why wilderness matters in my own life, in the hope that my explanation may help inform your choices, too.
As I recently returned from Death Valley, an experience comes to mind that may help illustrate my thoughts. Visitors to National Parks generally limit their experiences to roadside views, the convenience of hotels and purchased meals, and usually to places well-vetted in advance where beautiful scenery can be witnessed, or photographed, without significant risk or great investment of effort. You will generally only find me at such places when accompanying others who specifically want to visit them. Left to my own devices, I opt for the richer experience of heading far into the backcountry, making it my temporary home so I can commune with it in peace at all hours of the day, touch it and hear it and smell it and be awed by it, and distance myself to the extent possible from other, less inspiring, influences. I am specifically reminded of a small canyon found on a random meandering walk – a deep’ish cut in a large alluvial fan, not remarkable in any way that even merits a name. The banks, made of conglomerate rock, silt and pebbles stacked some twenty feet high, spoke of eons of flooding, deposits from ancient rivers and inland seas and the occasional fossilized remains of creatures long extinct. In one of the crevices I found a sun-bleached cottonwood limb, a long ways from anywhere cottonwoods grow today. It was hardened and dried, and had the light and dusty aroma of old wood. It had been dead for a very long time, perhaps centuries, and very soon, geologically speaking, the same will be true of me, and of humanity, and of these boulders of limestone, and of this desert, and of the Earth and the sun and the Milky Way. Nothing that is within our power will prevent the universe from unfolding over times and distances that are beyond our ability to even imagine. My existence will not even merit a footnote in the history of this nameless little canyon, let alone anything more enduring, and yet my being here fills me with sensations I never experience in other places – intense gratitude, anxiety-purging serenity, life-affirming happiness, penetrating silence, freedom and independence, and many more that I do not even have words for. I mean nothing to this place, but this place, in this tiny slice of time, means a lot to me.
The only way something matters, the only way something has meaning, is as it pertains to a miniscule flicker of consciousness within the sliver of eternity that is the present. Mattering is not a quality that can be objectively measured or quantified; it is the subjective degree to which something – event, sensation, knowledge or perception – elevates one’s living experience. And wilderness, to me, in my own mind and for a given present, makes my life better. It gives my existence meaning and significance; it inspires thoughts and moods that I cannot accomplish in any other way.
To humans raised in the artifice of urban places, and indoctrinated into prescribed social conventions, superstitions and the conferring of arbitrary importance on such contrived bases as political power, wealth and celebrity, these places offer the refuge of reality – a reality founded in the concrete, in the immense complexity and unfathomable mysteries of what we collectively call “nature,” spanning the gamut from sub-atomic particles to galaxies and universes. On a human scale, they are places of no judgment and no accountability, places where one may be attuned to their most vulnerable, noble and personal perceptions without guilt, without being beholden to others, without being tracked and monetized and marketed to, without fear and without stress. Conversely, if we give up the wild, the tyranny of others will become inescapable and the worth of an individual life will be that much diminished. Considered as such, how can anyone think of such places as having greater value in any other use?
And photography… photography is magical; it is interesting; it is a way of getting to know – and helping others get to know – something of these wild experiences; it is rewarding and it is fulfilling and it is easy. But enough about photography. No, seriously, enough. It’s not about photography, and photography has no hope of faithfully communicating even a small fraction of what it is about. The mute immensity of such places can only be appreciated in person, in direct contact with the real things. And so, I have different goals in mind for my photography than to even consider the arrogant premise that a photograph, or any number of photographs, can faithfully represent the depth and importance of them. With words I can get a little bit closer, but still cannot offer a true sense of the sounds and the silence, the scents, or the very real existential risks that make the experience that much grander.
But what is the greater risk? In my life today anxiety sometimes follows the occasional speculation about how long I can sustain this way of living. In contrast, the greatest source of anxiety in my former life was the persistent dread of wasting the greatest gift I will ever be given. And so, I believe that in a very real sense, the most dangerous places you may end up in are not in the wild, but in your own mind.
I had dreamed of such a life for many years, and was fortunate to make that dream a reality. I am sure that many have similar (or similarly alluring) dreams. If and when such dreams do come true the first thing you realize is that it’s not at all what you thought it would be. In some ways it is worse, but in other ways it also is better – much, much better, in ways you will never be able to predict until making the proverbial leap. My life, on the whole, is not easier than that of most others, at least in this country. But, every so often, and with some regularity, it rewards me with such intense and overwhelming beauty, such profound states of mind, and such powerful emotions that all else seems unimportant in comparison. I owe such states in a large degree to wilderness, more accurately to wildness – the sensations inspired by the experiences of living wildly in truly wild places.
As humanity continues to cluster around cities and to divert more of the Earth’s diminishing natural resources to industry, favoring economic growth over personal fulfillment, competition over sustained contentment, more over enough, I am reminded of the words of Aldo Leopold, “I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.” And I, too, am glad, that my own life, both as a young man and as an adult, was so deeply touched by wilderness.
You will not find me carrying picket signs or chained to a tree, and I admire those who act with such passion, no matter how successful. For me, however, my life is my activism, my teaching is my activism, my choices are my activism, and in those I will stand up for wilderness, but ultimately it is for each to value for themselves. My greatest regret is that many do not share my wilderness experiences, and may not truly know what is at stake – what humanity stands to lose if we give them up.
