Note: I started writing this sometime last fall, but I didn't publish it then for whatever reason, so now I've added a few things, and here it is.
For some people, this is never enough. That hungering for something real, something genuine, something profound takes them to the edges of the earth, into the most remote and harsh environments in the world. Some of them fall into crevasses on descent from the highest peaks of the Himalayas. Some walk into the Alaskan wilderness and are never seen again. And for me, their actions are fascinatingly paradoxical. They are one of the truest expressions of the individual, redefining their own reality and ignoring society's expectations to live life to the fullest. And yet, they are, at the end of the day, largely pointless and ultimately selfish undertakings.
There is nothing more profound than the individual. Nothing so beautiful as a man renouncing the expectations of society to live his own reality. Nothing quite so pure as a life on the road, a wanderer, a scavenger, living alone, off the land, never sure of tomorrow, but knowing that each new sunrise brings infinite possibility. The men who choose this life often die young, falling thousands of feet or disappearing into a whiteout, never to be heard from again. But in those twenty or thirty years of life they do have, they feel more present, more actual, more alive than most of us ever will.
I have a piece of that wilderness inside of me. The adventure, the wanderer's life, living on the edge in a remote corner of the world, with nothing between you and death except your own skill and blind faith--these things appeal to that part of me. They're always calling to me, in the middle of class, when I'm stuck inside and can't move, telling me to run, to escape, to be free.
But a life like this necessitates having those remote corners of the earth to run off to, to be free in. And I think that for people like me, having those spaces is so fundamental to our very existence that we also have a calling to protect them. And to truly love something enough to protect it, you need to know it.
This, I think, is one of the greatest paradoxes of the outdoor lifestyle. I see so many who want to live apart from society, in nature, because they feel that it's more real, more beautiful, more worth knowing. But as much as they quote philosophers and claim to love the natural world, they never seem to truly know it. How many famous rock climbers could identify the gait of a coyote's tracks, could tell you what plants would offer you the best chance of finding water if you had to spend the night in the desert? How many have truly connected with the natural world in a way that wasn't about themselves and their spiritual quest, but was about simply listening?
There are those who do truly look at these things, who don't view nature as a mere extension of themselves. But I think that this attitude is what we breed when we view nature on our terms--an escape from the ills of society--and not on its own terms. Rocks aren't there so I can climb them. Animals don't exist because they're interesting for me to watch.
I know all this, but I still have that desire for something better, something real, something important. Sometimes, I get that from climbing. There's something in being 300 feet of the ground with your life hanging on a single carabiner clipped through a single bolt hanger that makes you feel incredibly alive and present only in that moment. But sometimes, it's something else. Walking along a ridge, sometimes I'll see the forest, the meadows and the hills and think about the ecosystem that exists there, the way so many species connect and function as a whole. Or I'll see a set of deer tracks in the dirt and think about what they mean, about all the creatures that have walked the same path before me. And sometimes, it's those moments that make me feel alive.
I love the outdoors, both as an abstract and as a concrete. I can enjoy the landscape and the ideals it represents, but I can also find joy staring as a squirrel eating a nut for half an hour. I think that's important for anyone who finds something peaceful, something greater in the outdoors. A forest is a beautiful symbol of freedom and beauty. A forest is also made up of thousands of individual trees, each of which has a slightly different curve to its trunk, moss on its branches, and animals living in and on and around it. Get to know the trees too, and you'll appreciate the forest more.
