A Recollection of Being in the Wilderness Again

Life becomes more vibrant--more real--without the possibility of rescue. Your decisions hold weight, and that weight could be life. There are over 4,000 hospitals in the United States and almost 900,000 staffed hospital beds to serve a population of 320 million. In my own neighborhood north of San Francisco, I am within a 15 minute drive of at least 4 hospitals, not to mention countless urgent care clinics and medical facilities. I live my life never more than a few steps away from another human being, knowing that if anything were to happen I could be rescued within minutes.

It’s easy to forget, from our cozy urban enclaves, that we live in a country that boasts 3.8 million square miles of land, making us the third largest country in the world surpassed only by Russia and Canada. About 13% of that land mass is considered protected land (National/State Parks, Wilderness Areas, National Forests, and so on). 

I recently ventured to the largest contiguous wilderness area in the lower 48 states, surpassed only by the vast protected lands of Alaska. As a product of constant contact, it is easy for one to forget how truly isolated they are in a place like that. The Frank Church Wilderness boasts 2.3 million acres of mostly uninhabited land characterized by rugged, rocky mountains and steep plunging canyons that disappear into raging river beds. This is a habitat that Lewis and Clark traveled hundreds of miles north to avoid. Teeming with rattlesnakes and inhabited by bears, wolves, coyotes and other predators who feast on the bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer and other wildlife, hikes out in this wilderness area come with more potential consequences than a stroll around the unincorporated county lands of the California Coastal ranges where predators are so few and far between that deer have become pests. 

It is with this protected, impervious point of view that we entered this vast wilderness area. We were not ignorant or belligerent, but unweathered and inexperienced.  We were afraid of all the things we shouldn’t have been and oblivious to many of the real dangers. We hiked up inadvisable rock faces and encountered coiled serpents that, had we been a few inches closer, may have struck flesh. Yet, we felt protected--untouchable. We walked over washed out trails and through rockslide areas never suspecting that those same boulders might again take flight at an inopportune moment for us passers by. In a way, it’s like being a child, walking through life without the slightest idea of how many dangers are faced. 

But we are not children. And so when we see a mountaintop we want to conquer, there is no prohibition. We used trial and error, first following every elk trail we found, only to realize there was no congruence to their journey and ours. And so we walked, sometimes straight up, sometimes traversing. We struggled on all fours, grabbing at the sparsely rooted grasses and the scarce low shrubs to lug ourselves up. And every top we reached had only more hill behind it. Lest we walk and never stop walking, we had to call an arbitrary destination. We perched atop a cluster of rocks and speculated about whether death would follow a plunge off the edge. We looked down the long valley with the river snaking through from where we had come and appreciated the resilience of life. A fall here, death or not, would not be attended to quickly. 

We carried on over the other side of the hill which faced south and had very little firm dirt, but rather a heavy sand made of thousands of years of rolling rocks chipping away into smaller and smaller bits. Here too we tried a different way to get down. We all fell. As soon as you fatigued and let your weight fall back into your heels, the mountain would pull the rug out from underneath you. We made a game of our descent, scooting our butts down low and skiing down the sand, until one of us skied right into a snake's cozy afternoon sunning spot. I have never seen someone jump so far and so fast. 

Nature reminded us again that it does not tolerate irreverence. We proceeded slowly, with more caution until we reached the established trail again and the comfort of familiar voices from our group. As quickly as nature reminded us, we forgot. 

There is something valuable--essential--about the immediacy of the great outdoors. The earth has many lessons to teach us and we have advanced ourselves so far from her bosom that, like petulant children, we have forgotten that we are here at her beckoning and owe our lives to her tolerance. In the middle of the wilderness, far from aid, is where I feel the most alive. I am reminded of what it means for a decision to matter in some grave sense. The farther I get from the embrace of the vast expanses we are offered, the more I long for a clarity of purpose that comes with the immediacy of the environment when I’m not tucked away in my comfortable bed, inside my locked wooden house, surrounded by all the amenities I could possibly need.