Off the Road
Off the Road
February 2009
I am on the road, heading westward. America has a 500 year history of westward movement, ever since the first Europeans landed on the East coast. Explorers, pilgrims, missionaries, fur traders, settlers, farmers, miners, railroaders, cowboys, loggers, immigrants, Mormons, Okies, beatniks and hippies have all headed west. All were looking for freedom or at least something for free.
I have been going westward about once a year for the past ten years. I love the West, particularly the Southwest, the four corners area. All my trips out West have never been aimed at big-city destinations. Quite the opposite. I've tried to avoid the cities completely or pass quickly through them on my way to find the wild lonesome places, places without other faces, without any footprints. My greatest experiences of freedom have been found when I have gotten out of the city, off the freeway, and taken the road less traveled, gotten out of my car, then off the road altogether, crossed over the fence, and walked away from civilization and into the wilderness of nature.
The road has a history and a future. When I travel a road my thoughts are likely to live in the past from where I came or to look ahead to where I am going. I only see superficially what is all around me. When I leave the road to walk in the wilderness, I am immediately and intimately surrounded by nature. I can touch nature and be touched by nature. There is no boundary between myself and nature. I wander from tree to tree, rock to rock, plant to plant, land formation to land formation. I am aware all the while that all is alive. The well beaten path and the road block my view of this experience. The proximity of nature is distant, no longer intimate, and likewise my thoughts are far away, behind or ahead in some city.
When I wander where I will, I discover an inner landscape that corresponds to the outer landscape. I become free and wild. My thoughts are no longer linear but rather enriched by the senses, circulating through my whole body. Both walking and thinking happen serendipitously. When I wander upright on two legs, direction or destination does not matter. I am where I am. That's all that matters. I move through nature in coordinated synchrony, right leg and left arm, right arm and left leg; right, left, right, left, right, left, balanced perfectly.
When I walk in nature, there are no walls to hold me in and no fences to contain me. When I walk away from my possessions, they no longer own me, no longer hold me down. I become free to move and so become aware of any burdens that slow me down. I carry as little as possible: the clothes I wear, the contents in my pockets, perhaps water, maybe lunch, possibly a backpack with shelter and bedding depending on how long I wish to wander. I sometimes bring a camera and sketch book.
Oh, to walk with no ceiling hanging over my head. This is true freedom. Few however, can afford the price of giving up so much to become so free. Few can afford to take the time to find it. Most are in a hurry to get somewhere, to get something, staying on their well-worn paths and roads from work, to home, to store, moving by car in between. Then there are those who travel the computerized, information super highway sitting motionlessly and staring into cyberspace senselessly.
I love to get out of the cubical world and into the light. I love to see my shadow. I am my shadow and my shadow is me. We are connected. When I see my shadow I know I am alive and standing in the light. My shadow and I are dependent on the light for our existence. Without light, we die.
Oh, to walk through the landscape becoming fully alive, looking, listening, touching, tasting, smelling, being moved by nature. Oh, to wander unhurriedly in the world of nature, far from the world of commerce, politics and cities, to have one's thoughts to oneself, to know deep peace and quiet silence.
Most of my excursions into nature have been attempts to free myself from the modern world of city life, to flee from its systems of control, to escape. What I love about being in nature is the eventual ease with which I can experience the flowing, spiritual moment and forget the crazy, man-made, modern world. When I go into the wilderness the human world vanishes and no longer exists. In the wilderness, the world of humans is only an illusion.
Every time I have gone walking into the wild, I have always returned back to civilization, back to my suburban home, to my wife, kids, dog, and social obligations. Usually before supper time. I love them too and can't live without them. Besides I don't think I could survive long living in the wilderness. My survival skills have been genetically modified over the past 100 years. Somehow my ancestors lived for thousands and millions of years directly connected to nature. I have, however, mutated into a modern man, dependent on technological machines, and economic and social systems for my continued existence. My primal nature is nearly extinct. I am trying to keep it alive - by walking. Maybe someday I'll walk into the wilderness and keep walking. Maybe someday I won't come back.
But so far I've always come back. And every time I've returned, it seems the human world has expanded and gotten itself into more troubles. But I remember what I saw in the wilderness. I have seen the man-made world disappear, to be only an illusion. Consequently, I've come to realize that if the human world is an illusion and man-made, then it can be imagined differently - - - remade, recreated. Humans have the capacity to choose to live differently. We can establish and live by economic, political, social, environmental and religious systems based on equality, fairness, justice, compassion, respect, mutual aid, cooperation and love.
We humans need the reality of nature and the realness of the wilderness. We need the option to escape into nature, into wilderness in order to remember who we are and where we came from. We need to experience nature regularly to help us forget about human affairs, for long enough periods of time to clear and cleanse our minds and to restore our spirits. We need the ability to escape the human world in order to imagine and dream of new human possibilities and new ways of living. Human life depends on nature.
With over six and a half billion people on the face of the earth, it is however, getting harder and harder to escape the human, man-made world to find nature and experience the wilderness. Human need and greed is gobbling up the natural world, replacing it with the world of humans. The wilderness is vanishing before our very eyes. The fate of nature and humans now depend on humans recreating the human world.