Nature Writing Reflections
The idea of being alone has come up many times in my journal entries. I believe that in the beginning of the semester I was against the idea that being solitary had anything to do with you controlling your relationship with nature. I believe I see differently now. I think that way down deep I believed that being alone, sometimes, is very important in being one with nature. But for some reason, I held, in the conscious/scientific level of my mind, the opposite idea.
Regardless, I now believe that being alone at some, in my case many, points in time helps to create a strong relationship with nature. From my experiences as a Boy Scout, a camp counselor, a sailor, a musician, and a filmmaker, I have found myself in the right place at the right time, with the right person, me, to develop a bond to the earth.
I can remember one day when I was 18 hiking alone, I had a surreal experience. It was my day off from being a camp counselor. The camp was in Sandwich, Mass, on Cape Cod. I didn't feel like taking the camp shuttle into town that day. Instead I went hiking through the woods. In some places, I could tell by the lay of the pine needles that nobody had tread these niches of the woods for years.
Seven years before, Hurricane Andrew, had swept across the Cape. Many of the cabins in the camp were torn down by the winds. Trees way off in the forest fell, crashing into other trees and knocking those down too. I found these trees that day, lying upon their sides. The ground was soft with years and years of pine needles falling down and cushioning the Earth.
It was there in a clearing, a ring of fallen trees almost completely surrounded a roundish open section of ground. High above this open section was covered by the trees standing around the clearing. Through the branches I could see sunrays coming down all the way to the ground. I ran my hand through those beams of light, I could feel the energy as my hand passed through them. I felt the energy that fed all these trees as I had never done before. I felt truly "related" to this forest. I was as much a part of it, at that point, as the ferns growing from the hulk of foot and half thick fallen pine tree.
Although I felt very alive through the energy of those sunrays, I felt like I had to quiet my existence. I had to stifle my excitement. The light filtering through the tree branches reminded me too much of the light falling through stained glass. I felt humbled by the mausoleum like nature of the place. Truly these trees must be more important than myself, they touch the sky, stand tall before me, urging me to genuflect before them.
The memory of the apparent power of these trees reminds me of Whitman's Song of a Redwood. I felt the grandness of those mighty trees. This memory is my main cause for not buying into Whitman's idea that man is more grand than the Redwoods of the poem. The voice of the tree, in the poem, almost seemed to worship the idea of man, and what man could be capable of. I felt this sentiment to be so out of touch with nature. With respect to the grandness of trees, I ally my mind with those of the ancient Druids, bow before these trees, don't make them bow before the might of your axe. A man can fell a tree with the power of his hatchet, but a tree can fell a men by sight alone.
Had I been with another person that day. I do not think I would have noticed as much of the power of that place. Or if I had noticed it I would not have voiced that to the other person unless they voiced it first. I think the communion with nature is a very personal one. I could count the number of people, on my right hand, that I would be willing to risk sharing an experience like that with. There are only a small group of people whom I can truly be around and still fully take an experience in without any inhibitions.
Inhibitions, what inhibitions? Well to let out how you feel about nature, in the last 20 years, is to announce that you're a "tree hugging Earth muffin." And I want that almost as much as a musician would want to be called "pop." So if I happened to stumble across a place like that with the wrong type of person, the beauty could have been lost completely. Although some people will tell you the danger of getting lost is too great, I say go to the woods alone as often as you can and see what worlds you can discover.
The idea of being alone seems frightening to some people. Some people just thrive upon people, and whither when alone. I spent a great deal of time alone, either reading or roaming the woods near Boston. I don't mind it anymore. There were times when I did mind it, but I enjoy the amount of independence I feel on my own in the woods. The "Solitary I" that I become in the woods is self that I enjoy being.
It seems that in the civilized world you can easily become bored sittin in the same position, looking at the same old things. If I do the same thing in the woods though, I'm thoroughly entertained. I don't worry about the passage of time. I always regret when visiting Walden Pond that I can't be alone there. There are always tons of visitors. No matter how far around the pond you go, you can always see and hear them.
Walden is a great place to go to, if you can manage to go on a day relatively slow for the "Parks Department." The best time to go is in the late fall. The only problem is that the water is very cold in the late fall, so you can't swim. But to be there without bumping into another person around that "earth's eye" is a great pastime.
The image of the eye that Thoreau puts forth in The Ponds is one that has stuck with me since reading the book. The idea of a solitary eye looking out from earth, independent of the other lakes, made me feel like part of that perspective. Standing beside that giant "eye" I could not help but feel involved. When my friend Kate put the sentiment into poetry I knew the feeling and the line would stick with me forever, "the eye that looks forth from earth and sees only heaven." Imagine being able to only see the endless beauty of heaven and nothing else. I think that the closest man can get to that vision is to look into that eye. He must see heaven reflected, with his own reflection superimposed over it. For man does not understand the pictures of heaven he sees when looking at it directly.
Part of being alone, or getting closer to being alone is to simplify. To simplify you must cut out all the extraneous things in your life. Imagine cutting your ties slowly, much like Bartleby, until you are free to just waltz off into the woods. If nothing ties you to society, then nothing holds you back from nature. I don't think that Thoreau's notion of simplicity will ever take hold on a grand scale, but for the individual it's a healthy notion. Perhaps that is best, if the simplicity worked for everyone, then the woods would be as crowded as the cities are right now.
The reason I don't think Thoreau's simplicity could work on a grand scale is that humans are too much a social animal. We love to tell stories, shop, argue, fight, laugh, sing, etc. all things which don't make too much sense in the woods, or at least they don't make sense to most people in nature. It is a privileged man who needs no other men. But as I said before this is not truly such a bad thing. The woods, and all of nature, is there, at least until we finally chop down the last tree, for those willing to go to it. How peaceful and spiritual would the forest be if you saw McDonald's cups lying around? Visit Walden Pond in the middle of the summer and you can see what truckloads of weekend warriors can do to the peacefulness of a quiet wood. How peaceful and serene would it be if around every tree there was someone yakking on a cell phone?
The phrase "The Call of the Wild," to me, is call to the solitary, simple nature that I have been describing. I think that you must be in a state of separateness from society to feel the call. In some way you must break yourself from your fellow man. It could be as simple as riding up in an elevator and just hating the feeling of confinement you get from being herded like cattle into a boxcar with your fellow nine-to-fivers. Just as long as you feel pulled away from the aspects of civilization, you will feel that that pull is toward the natural world lying on the outskirts of your concrete jungles.
But as I said previously, there are some people you can be in nature with. I have had some great experiences with other people in nature. Once I got lost in the woods of Massachusetts with another scout in my patrol. We were lost for about two hours, but for the first half an hour we didn't know we were lost. That was great fun. We were tracking a deer. Had I been by myself I wouldn't have noticed the tracks. It was the other person that stumbled across them in the snow. Sure we were embarrassed and I got in a great deal of trouble, being the patrol leader, but I didn't mind. That first half an hour was spent in an existence of Eric (the other scout), myself, the deer, and the woods. Nothing else really existed then.
I had another experience recently of being in a group and feeling in touch with nature. It was on the North Shore, by Freddy's and V. Land. I was with Rick Payne and Kolo Rathburn. We were having a bonfire on the beach. The fire took forever to start. The lighter refused to work, and the wind was constantly fighting against us. Between the sound of the waves crashing, the warmth of the fire, the light of the stars, and the company of my two friends, I felt at home in the cold midnight sand.
I believe that being alone is the easiest way to get in touch with nature. The most simple way to get in touch with nature. I don't know whether or not it is the best way, but I think it is the best way for me. The amount of times I have felt a part of the world while alone far outnumbers the times I have felt a part of the world while in society. This, however, makes those times with other people special. They stand out in my memory, sharply, holding their own with the memories of being truly one with nature.