rant from the wilderness

ben evans, fellow americorps volunteer and occasional email correspondent, asked me recently to rant about the wilderness. i mentioned that ed abbey in desert solitaire does just that, and he was interested in knowing more about it. what follows is a flow of consciousness that i wrote in a cafe, tweaked out on caffeine and with a few precious hours to kill in between jobs. some of it is based on, or, let's be honest, flat out stolen from the pages of, ed abbey's most beloved memoir. a bit comes from my other dear mentor and favorite agricultural essayist, wendell berry. some of it is from my personal experiences living in total wilderness for 11 weeks straight. some of it comes from my imagination....

"rant from the wilderness"

ed abbey says "they" are pushing us into the cities to prepare for the imminent authoritarian regime. "they" will trap us in the cities, surround us, mechanize our agriculture, take away our guns and make it impossible for us to survive without complete submission to the government. no more guerrilla warfare, for there will be no more jungle in which to stage a rebellion and to hide from our enemy: the industrial authoritarian. but we've arrived at this point and don't even realize it. we can't grow our own food, we are flooding the cities and cannot fathom wilderness survival (that is the stuff of experts seen on the discovery channel, certainly not your everyday joe). industry has the ultimate authority over our entire existence and we are listfully passive about all of this.

some things i have learned:
1. any person can build a fire that is capable of cooking food...even meat.
2. with the right equipment and in moderate climates, any person can survive entirely outdoors.
3. it takes a surprisingly short amount of time to get in tune with nature and to sense changes in the weather and seasons.
4. showers, and especially soap, are entirely overrated.
5. when left without cds, mp3s, i-pods, computers, and other sound devices, humans will make their own music.
6. community agriculture is one of the most rewarding and unifying social endeavor. so are community cooking and community eating.
7. nudity is not shameful.
8. obesity would cease to exist if cars did too.
9. children should absolutely participate in subsistance farming and all household chores. that is not child labor, it's socialization.
10. we all deserve to see the sun rise or set, or both, every day.

while we're at it, i might well describe the problem i have with the word "wilderness," which implicitly separates itself from civilization. we know the word to mean "that which is untouched by humanity." therefore, it is not our place. how are we to feel at home in a world that is expressly scary and unknown? better to stay in the safety of our industrial cities, where we have "reliable" water, heating, and food supplies. who wants to risk bears and unexpected thunderstorms, drought and black flies??

the natural world must be revindicated by humanity, but not in the traditional, patriarchal, dominating way. it must not be conquered, partitioned and lorded over. we must humbly return, ask for forgiveness, and listen to the heart of nature to begin again. we must sit quietly for a long time among cedars and does and ground squirrels and yarrow, and learn from them how to behave.

i am disgusted by industry, manufactured materials and "good deal" (the-cheaper-the-better concept). we are poisoning ourselves with our cut-corners and our mindless complicity. we don't care where our food comes from as long as it is cheap. we don't want to pay for the hidden costs in this global economy, and yet we feel betrayed by those who drove us into our impending depression. we don't want to earn anything, we want everything for less, and the less time anything takes, the better. so that we have time for celebrity gossip, self-absorbed primping internet comas, sport stats and one more beer, bartender.

numb the pain, nurse the wound, alienate others, forget about that earth-shaped hole in your heart (an earth-shaped hole in the universe). and whatever you do, don't got out alone at night. bad things might happen to you...

a few times this summer, i had the chance to bathe alone at sunset. most days i did it in the afternoon after work with some of my crew, sometimes naked but most often with underwear. but those few times at sunset, the water was warm on my bare skin and the sky was pink beyond the mountains in the west. silence surrounded me as i slipped quietly into the blue water. there was only me in all creation, performing ablutions, a sacred cleansing ceremony, among my friends the junipers and ponderosa pines.

i was not lonely. i was not hurting. i was at peace with my body, at peace in my mind, heart and infinite spirit. i felt whole and healed by the simple act of washing myself clean after a hard day's work. the water cradled me in the womb of Mother Earth, and i floated in the stillness of that infinite moment. back in the womb of my Mother, safe and warm and complete.

in the city, the pavement is hard and cold under my feet. i can feel the heartache of industrialism through the sole of my hiking boots. i feel strange wearing them in this urban setting, soiling them after hiking hundreds of miles in them on backcountry trails. cars with their cold, hard, steel shells separate me from every human in view. they whiz by, hardly noticing me and my hiking boots, and all the others around them. we do not acknowledge our kindred, earthly connection. we are estranged or long-lost and never-found sisters and brothers, unaware or indifferent to our universal familial bond. we are afraid of contrived dangers and insecurities, an alleged failing economy and increasing risks of terrorist attacks, and yet we have created these scary scenarios through our own capitalism and nationalism (love of money and love of boundaries, respectively. both divide and neither unites). we choose to believe the illusion of business and individualism instead of the universal truths of cooperation and community. the city is a giant corpse still pumping oil through its disintegrating heart and is falsely dictated by a mechanical, money-hungry brain.

our souls are hiding in the trees, waiting for us to retrieve and restore them. we have only to look in earnest, and the world will reveal itself to us. and we will hear the music to which we have been deaf all these years, the music that resounds through our liberated, naked bodies when we commune with the wild. one day, we will come home.





i'll end with a nice excerpt from desert solitaire, one of many brilliant and inspirational passages in his beautiful book:

"we are obliged, therefore, to spread the news,
painful and bitter though it may be for some people to hear,
that all living things on earth are kindred."