“There is a legacy deep within us, a legacy of instinct, a legacy of inherited feelings which may lay very deep in the tissues. It may lay underneath all the parts of civilization which we are familiar with on a daily basis but it has not gone. We might have left the natural word (most of us) but the natural world has not left us.
For 50,000 years we were wildlife. Our spirits have a longing to be a part of it.”
-Michael McCarthy
The practice of pilgrimage is one that has fascinated me all my life -the long journey of solitude in search of deeper meaning. In this time of great instability, I felt compelled to explore this - to return to the wilderness, to learn what it had to teach and how I in turn may show up for it.
Hiking this trail was a way of exploring this legacy and longing to return to the wild in a time where I feel most viscerally called by it. It seems that the Coronavirus, this microscopic organism which has wreaked havoc on our world in this past year, may have called us to see with some acute clarity, the limits of our own human progress and how the earth may respond when we listen and slow our frenzied pace.
I chose to hike 485 miles across my home state of Colorado to rediscover the land which has nourished me since my first breath and which remains as limitless and unknown as when I first bore witness to it. For 27 days of walking I was washed over with the unspeakable abundance of the natural world. I was humbled, stripped down, often brought to my knees by the sheer force of mountain storms high above timberline where Nature offers no shelter nor escape. I came to feel the sensation of true vulnerability, greeting the boundaries of my self.
Since I stopped walking and returned to “reality,” I have struggled to summarize the depths of what I experienced out there, so I resolved to share just a few excerpts from my journal on the trail in hopes that these thoughts may ignite something in the reader, that they may serve as one small step towards restoring our relationship with the natural world.
Day 3
My inner dialogue so far has been focused on survival and coming to know how sacred the resources are from which we depend for survival, namely water. The state is ablaze with fire and the available water on the trail is half of what is normal.
I am coming to know the limits of my body and its capacity to endure.
I have been meditating upon this drawing by Alan Watts which I drew on my left wrist.
There is so much this design reveals to me - the upward growth of the visible, downward of the invisible and our thin line of existence which runs between - within. The open arrows, a sign of growth and life in both directions, following the length of our most vital life line upon which I drew it. The symbols point forward into nature and inward within the self -back and forth to the rhythm of my legs and arms moving me steadily through these vast forests and sweeping mountain fields.
I am beginning to feel an opening for contemplation here as my body and mind adjust to the pain and beauty this journey offers.
No words can describe how precious, how sweet a fresh mountain stream feels against tired sun-beat skin.
‘Time is a live creek bearing changing lights,’ Annie Dillard said.
I thought about that last night as I slept along a creek, rocked to rest by its gentle and consistent pulse.
I am beginning to feel at peace with the wild things too.
The air is crisper now and is calling me forward.
Day 4
Camping in an open meadow next to aspen trees and a greatly flowing stream to my right - an ever expanding sunset over the distant hills to my left. Today I started to feel things I haven’t felt before, started to see things I haven’t before.
At the top of one mountain pass, I felt for the first time since I began this journey, a pure wash of joy and wonder, my body is adjusting to the routine, the pain, the gratification and tonight I feel embraced by this high golden meadow, the slow descent into night and the anticipation of the meteor shower soon to greet my eyes.
I haven’t felt this depth of peace for quite some time, perhaps not ever. It feels like this is how we were meant to be, closer to this rhythm at least. I feel little want nor desire for anything beyond the daily beat of my feet against the earth, moving through space and time at a pace that is entirely dependent on the limits of my own body, allowing nature’s mystery to reveal herself to me around every corner.
It is a gift to be here, to allow my thoughts to roam freely through the movements of each day, wandering, exploring the depths of the untapped, unanswered or unresolved corners of my life.
Out here, there is no hiding.
Day 10
I cannot cause light.
The most I can do is put myself in the path of its beam.
-Annie D.
Day 11
Allow your soul to wander through the golden meadow and the rushing distant stream. Let the birdsong punctuate and lift the measure of your burdened step.
Day 14
‘It was less like seeing than for the first time, being seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.’
-Annie Dillard
Two weeks in, over halfway there and I feel I am only just beginning.
Sitting on the Continental Divide on the side of Bald Mountain: 12,515 feet. This altitude is beginning to feel like home to me. Things are oddly gentler here, the plant and animal life softer, quieter and yet able to endure the harshest conditions. It is this paradox that draws me to the desert as well. Ed Abbey aptly describes these desolate places where ‘Life is not stacked upon life but spread out in sparseness and simplicity,.’ It is that I seek, that which brings me peace. I’ve felt isolated, challenged by the endless miles of woods where there is no escape to the cyclical nature of my free-roaming thoughts. Up here, the world feels more forgiving. Looking down over these endless waves of woods, I cannot hear the constant rush of the stream, reminding me of our movement through time here. In this moment, I hear nothing but the suspension of the wind, the occasional bird song piercing through the thin air, reminding one of freedom, expansiveness, of a breath freely breathed. All the fears, the pain, the struggles which live below in those trees and streams, the obscurity of the darkness and the cool rush of time, looks rather peaceful from above. The sun slowly burns away its harsh edges.
Day 21
Be still and listen to nature’s beating heart.
Watching the clouds roll by, limitless, indifferent to my human presence - my fragile vulnerable self in the face of its endless roll of terror and glory.
Up here, we are so much closer to the force of nature and we feel ourselves compelled to meet it, to act as a mirror to its evanescence as Rilke suggests.
‘Nature does not hurry and yet everything is accomplished, ‘ Lao Tzu reminds me.
Day 24
Most days this trip has been about survival. At the end of each day, my body is sore, depleted. It is all that I can do to get myself fed and into my tent before my limbs begin to freeze. Today was different, more clear, bright, peaceful. I slowed down significantly and took in the process of each aspect of the day. Now, allowing the sun to warm my aching body, 1.1 miles past the most beautiful pass of the trip, shoes off - my bare throbbing feet against the soft earth - welcoming mountain faces embrace me like a hug from an old friend. I feel at home here, maybe for the first time. I am unraveling the cord that hangs my food each night, mangled and messy. I take my time, knot by knot to unravel it, the sun still washing over me slowly, gently heating my cold and aching bones. Here I am, unhurried, untethered - gently, lovingly untangling the knots of my life. This is the way I wish to spend the last few days of this journey, fully present in these moments, open and spilled over, merging with my surroundings - emptied enough to be a vessel, a conduit through which nature may move freely through me.
Day 26
The air is gentle here, the ground is soft beneath my feet.
I feel no cause for hurry, drinking in the fullness of this space filled with birdsong unique to my ears. New moss clinging to new bark, red and golden grass dusted on the hillside celebrate the sun.
There have been days, many, on the journey where an icy wind has coursed through every fiber of my being -days where I had forgotten the comfort of warmth. Those days have brought me here to this warm hillside, bathed in a tender embrace, seeing from a distance those unforgiving nights - uninhabitable, disinterested in human life but enticing us to know, to respect, to return us to the earth, anchored, humbled and cleansed.
Perhaps one isn’t meant to inhabit these high places but to live in humility, in service to and respect for the mystery they present.
I am happier on this distant hillside where I feel my presence more in harmony with the life here, less disruptive. Here I feel capable, compelled to live a life in stewardship to this beauty.
It is a curious thing, one’s interest in climbing to these heights. It seems a magnified paradox of our greatest potential and yet our inevitable transience.
And like the birds who roam freely at these heights to return to the earth where they delicately rest upon it.
That we may be like the birds.