I have studied wildness for many years, fornally and in practice. What does it mean, entail, what characteristics, benefits, challenges. I have learned a lot, though like most similar pursuits, the biggest thing is an awareness of how much I don't know.
But here's a few things I DO know. It isn't dangerous, though there are risks. It isn't scraping by, though wildness teaches endurance and acceptance of unpleasantness. It is often a simple abundant life in which we can literally find what you need within arm's reach and the lion often truly lies down with the lamb.
This of course is not to romanticize the endurance if cold, heat, bugs, hard work, or the skills and savvy required to survive. The Wilds truly don't care if you live or die. So they should not be underestimated.
But I'm writing to try to tease out a cloudy set of values and philosophy that I feel deep down is true and beneficial...maybe.
It has to do with how we approach things. See in Wilderness, species is an alien concept. All creatures just are. They work together in some ways and not in others. It doesn't matter if you are human or squirrel or bird, or hog or fish or coyote or rabbit. So here, we can shed the whole paradigm of who we think we are since all that matters is what we REALLY are...what we do.
Self-concept changes in the Wilds. I've experienced it so many times. But what exactly it is that draws me is hard to pin down. I guess the best way to put it is that there are no judgements and no regrets. These words are loaded for us humans, so I need to unpack it. There is room for compassion, but there is no judgement if I am not. I can knock down the spider web and the spider will simply rebuild it. There is a cost to the spider, so I may choose not to knock it down if I can go around, but either way the spider doesn't hate me or react to me in any different way.
An animal simply wants to survive and takes what comes. It doesn't spend time analyzing, though I do firmly believe I've seen some mentally processing. I have seen enough to recognize sentience in even very small creatures. Actually, it's a constant living in the present. That's what it is!
It's that simple. Wow! I already had the answer before I knew the question. To live with that animal wisdom is to be ever here and now. The past is gone the future has not occurred. Neither exist.
I had wondered how I could pull that sense of wellness I get in wilderness into my life in the broken, sick world. And that is it. We are products of what we have done, but that can't be changed. And our future is not yet decided, so it can be changed. But all of that occurs at the infinitely small intersection of potential becoming history we call the present.
Stay there!
