Nature is the domain of infinite grandeur. Vast and verdant canopied cathedrals of forest, sunset drenched expanses of rolling foothills, receding into breathtaking panoramic backgrounds of distant indomitable mountains, the intervening space seemingly illustrating the simple time lapse evolution from grassy dimple to rocky peak, only to be ground back down again again into the earth when the eye plays the scene in reverse. If the mountains are not forever then we are certain that nothing is forever, and, in the splendor of nature, nothing is less forever than us.
There is nothing I love more than to solo hike through this rugged terrain, alone to think my thoughts amidst the smell of the pines, the alternating warm & cool mountain breeze, the swirling clouds of dust kicked up and catching the slanted sunlight cutting through the trees as it settles again, the shrill cries of “I meeeeaaaaaannnn….” and “I literallllyyyyyyy” emanating from gaggles of yoga pant-clad white women with Camelbaks full of Bogle chardonnay, echoing for miles in every direction. Wait - what the fuck? Well, I guess that’s what you get when you hike within ~ 1hr radius of the Denver Metro area. That or an excruciating rise through a series of switchbacks in which you are privvy to somebody’s conference call. Oh well, it’s still immersion in nature, I guess.
I no longer live in Colorado, and rereading the above makes me simultaneously nostalgic and very glad to be gone. Indeed, most of the aspects I miss about the area no longer exist to enjoy; experiences available in an enjoyable form for only a brief window of time, but no longer, and now accessible only as corrupted, debased versions of the forms that I knew and loved.
Same Ladder, Different Rungs
Point #1 of this short essay is that many things are like this. The iteration of something that I knew and loved and the condition that I knew it in - hiking in the [relatively] uncrowded mountains - was itself the corrupted & debased iteration of a thing that somebody else who was there long before me loved in the same way, and which eventually grew to be a source of pain for them as they witnessed its deterioration [into the condition that I came across it in]. For me it was new; novel and splendid in contrast to the mountainless state I moved from. For them it was old and desecrated, unrecognizable and depressing to behold because of their knowledge of its potential, of the memories bound up in it, of the contrast between how it was and what it, irrevocably, became. By the same token, the iteration of that same thing which to me characterized its the corrupted and debased form relative to how I first experienced it, is the new and novel form to the new transplant, aka some Jr. Business Analyst from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, recently paroled into a covid remote work plan and shipped out to the midwest from NYC. But such is the way of things, of countless commons’ and their respective tragedies. I am not here to pick on PWC employees, nor do I believe in “pulling up the ladder” and, having done so myself, can hardly begrudge anybody who seeks a better life by moving from the neurotic frenzied east coast [or wherever] to anywhere with a relatively slower pace. We should all be so lucky. One can be wistful, but to be bitter is to be ignorant that one once was on the other side of the equation (and in moving away to a different place to escape the new NYC transplant is likely playing the same role in another setting.)
Back To Nature
For reasons that will become clear, I will henceforth be referring to the forest/mountain/ponds/hills/trails/streams aspect of “nature” as “the outdoors”. The appeal of the outdoors is easy to see: their scenic beauty, the [relative!] peaceful, quiet, tranquility, the opportunity to see wildlife in its natural habitat. Many cite the feeling of humbleness that the expansive scale of the outdoors confers, of being rendered a truly insignificant speck in the grand scheme of things. For many, there is an intensity of sublime awe and adoration, approaching that of the religious. Immersion in the peace and beauty of the outdoors provides us with spiritual grounding, a sense of connectedness to some ancient & primal force that we often don’t realize we needed until we are thusly immersed up to our eyeballs.
I contend almost none of this. Having ample access to the outdoors, to miles of mountain trails, to be able to lose myself in the woods, get fresh air & exercise in a beautiful, quiet setting is personally very important to me. Indoors, I spend a lot of time in front of a screen. Whether at work or just screwing around on the internet, I often find that I’ve lost track of the time, my bodily awareness drops until I suddenly realize that the posture police are off duty, that I’ve been sitting hunched over, eyes inches from the screen, ears buried in my shoulders, for who knows how long. A few miles in the woods is exactly what I need to digest whatever I’ve been consuming, and feel rejuvenated and refreshed.
In my house, the personal effects, my crap, they’re not the physical structure of anything, but they remind me of the demands of life, of consumption, of work. Out here in the woods, I simply go, my posture adapting to that of the land. In my absence, the woods would continue to exist exactly as it does in my presence, completely indifferent to my being here. I am unable to really perceptively alter it in anyway even if I tried. It is this feeling of not being needed, depended upon, or even acknowledged, that is extremely liberating. With no cell reception, there is nothing to consume, nor be consumed by. I am content to just chew scenery, for in an environment where nothing depends on me but me, there is no burden, no ownership, no urgency. It’s a nice vacation from responsibility, from forms of domestic and professional confinement. And like most vacations anywhere, what we love about them primarily is that we aren’t working. They provide contrast to something we would prefer not to be doing.
No matter how much I may not feel like taking a walk beforehand, I’m always glad I did. Upon returning, I feel refreshed and rejuvenated - that tired in a good and wholesome way kind of tired. The outdoors to me is a palette cleanser. A change of pace. It is the extraction from the domain of work and narrow focus, and into the one of play and open contemplation. On really shit days, it’s a veritable hard reboot for the mind. There is something that feels almost circadian about it - a natural rhythm of stasis to movement; too much time spent in doors, I need to get out for a bit. A good question for another time is, if being outdoors is so “spiritually transcendent,” why do I need so many frequent resets?
In Our Nature
And yet it occurs to me, that as man, which is to say, an animal, that even when sitting in my house hunched in front of my monitor and eating frozen cauliflower crust pizza, that I am in my habitat. I am already in nature. When we talk about “nature”, we make a weird distinction between the inorganic and the organic, urban and remote, the man-made vs the naturally-occurring. This may seem a little weird for a culture which obsesses about tinkering with the genetics of our food on the one hand, and then gives puberty blockers and other hormone cocktails to children with the other, or which relegates its dealings with other human beings to arms-length, transactional relationships, but there is no need to get bogged down in such political detours today.
Just because something is not organic does not mean it isn’t nature. When I leave my house, and step on to the sidewalk, I am still in nature. I walk a little further, out of the neighborhood [nature], onto the path [nature], and soon enough am in a mountainside meadow [all nature]. The earth is nature. We are never not in nature, even at Walmart.
“Connecting with nature” is shorthand for “disconnecting from everything we consider ‘not nature.’” We seek to escape not ourselves, but any trace of other people, of the hustle & bustle of the grind. It is the luxury of isolation, of experiencing exclusivity in expansiveness. A study in contrast that balances the prior time spent immersed in technology, a moderating agent for the man-made, the inorganic. The more adjacent or proximal we are to the stress of the manmade world, the more appealing & rejuvenating just such a change of scenery feels. The different sensations and modes of being it provides seem more desirous. It IS beautiful, and it IS expansive, and it IS awe-inspiring, but… I don’t find anything particularly transcendent or religious about. (And honestly, is it really more expansive as the internet?) It feels good to be there, but it is probably not a place we wish to stay - a little nature is very nice, but too much nature is extremely stressful once you cross that fine line between a nice hike and overstaying your welcome - you too will be wishing for the comforts of the hearth (aka TV) after a few hours of being lost in the woods.
Buzzkill for a Very Deep and Spiritual Person
And it goes without saying that when we say we love being in “the wilderness”, we mean a situation that is really no more statistically dangerous than going to the supermarket. We like the simulation of being in the “wilderness” - a path, a park, a meadow not too far from the road - we are temporary visitors, and there is vast beauty, but no real element of danger (Until there is. Really. Hike at your experience level, be prepared, be smart). We are not having to survive off the land using our wits, we are not trying to survive at the mercy of mother nature in the long term (ok, technically you could say we are, but you know what I mean here). We can uber to the trail, hike for a bit, take a selfie at a lovely vista, eat a macronutrient-dense energy bar, and then uber back to the wine bar in time for happy hour. We can uber eats a burrito from a mountainside and time the delivery to be waiting there when we get home. It is not immersion, it is just an atmospheric reset.
And so I just can’t help but roll my eyes slight when I hear people talk about “connecting with nature” or “getting in touch with a spiritual side.” I have to admit, I don’t know what experience in their own personal hearts. I can’t deny what they feel or not, but to me ascribing such weighty provisions to a walk in the woods feels a bit like kidding ourselves, like so much embellishment or upselling. To me this doesn’t seem farfetched when everything in the world is described as “amazing”.
I feel like I feel moved by the scenery, but never more than just refreshed. I don’t take anything permanent with me; in fact, usually when I reach the 90% mark of the hike I’d pretty much be ok with warping directly back to the car. I think at most we just “transcend” the urge to check our email for a few hours via a temporary voluntary digital detox, and since too much work is pathological and draining, this is very good for us, whether “us” is shorthand for the spirit or soul. We feel like a new person, emerging from a spiritual acid bath. Maybe I’m spiritually inert, but I don’t think there’s much more to it than that. It’s an extremely marked contrast, that’s all.
It is not contentious to say that the United States is much less religious, in the traditional sense, than it was in the 20th century. Perhaps in the same way that, simply to step outdoors and breath the outside air stands in marked contrast to spending eight hours in front of a screen, many of us nowadays are so far from having anything approaching a “spiritual connection” in the religious sense in our lives that we seize upon the first thing we see. This is not to suggest or prescribe that a religious revival is either in order or imminent, but only to suggest that, if we are so readily able to find some aspect of God in nature, it may reflect the lack of proximity to anything truly spiritual in our lives. One cannot help but notice the undercurrents of a deep lack of meaning, connection, and fulfillment in society.
And, as if I needed to be even more of a buzzkill, as certainly as this time away from the humming overhead fluorescents of the office or house is nourishing and feels incredible, we know, sadly, that just as we are out here refortifying our psyches, our myriad inboxes are likewise gearing up for the next battle, replenishing themselves with endless emails, IMs, texts, and voicemails, from an endless army of bosses, clients, friends, patients, etc. (One of the saddest moments of my life was on the GORGEOUS hike of Square Top mountain in Colorado, where, after having no reception for miles, I got to the summit and all of a sudden received a bunch of slack notifications.)
Physical vs Personal Insignificance
As far as feeling small and insignificant standing next to a redwood tree or within an expanse of mountainous territory, why not among sky scrapers, in midtown NYC? If you want to feel insignificant, try walking up the steps at Grand Central Station at 8:30am on a weekday, or walk through the streets of New Delhi, for that matter. I think the real distinction is that, in those settings, we lose our individuality; we are revealed to be truly one among many. How can we possibly matter? We are insignificant in the context of other millions. In nature, in the quiet, breathtaking expanse, we are the only individual. The world, while agnostic to us, seems to belong to us. Out in nature, our uniqueness is without competition, without anything to diminish nor reveal the basic condition of indistinguishability of our identity in the same way that immersion in the crowded city environment accomplishes. In nature, in the outdoors, we look around. It is us, and thousands of trees. What kind of trees? Maybe we know species, , but no individual tree is anything more than the ones around it; this one is a tree, just as that one is a tree, they’re all “just trees”, same as any other; and who cares. The forest is just the Grand Central of trees, of reducing them to undifferentiated mass, and as the alien in that environment, we stand out as unique among them. In midtown Manhattan or New Delhi, the role is reversed - any tree stands out as more unique among the undifferentiated human biomass. And maybe that tree has transcended something, I can’t really say.