I started writing this post two years ago and never finished it, though I used a selection of its text in a short film honoring my seven-year journey on The Colorado Trail (embedded below). Sometimes I write things that end up sitting unfinished in my drafts folder for years, and sometimes I steal parts of those saved drafts for other projects, like films. On rare occasions, like this one, I’ll come back to a draft and finish it. It may become something entirely different in the process.
For decades I’ve struggled to explain what it feels like to return to “normal life” after spending time in remote wilderness. It’s like moving from a place of whole acceptance to a place of unbelonging. Perhaps others can relate in their own ways. I think (I hope) we each have a particular place where we feel a sense of peace and full acceptance. For me, that place is—and always has been—wilderness.
But it’s also in my art. When I create, I feel fully alive, just as I do in the mountains. When I envision a new idea for a creative project, I am energized. My mood shifts. Things suddenly, if temporarily, seem more attainable. I feel hopeful. There’s a flow in doing the work that makes me feel connected and whole. I want to stay in that flow of connectedness for as long as I can, and when it inevitably ends, I spend much of my time trying to find it again.
One of my favorite eco-poets, Gary Snyder, wrote that “one should not dwell in the specialness of the extraordinary experience nor hope to leave the political quagg behind to enter a perpetual state of heightened insight.”1
I think I understand the concept behind Snyder’s words. We are not truly separate from the societal world. Wilderness and civilization are the same piece of earth. The artist and the life that inspires her are not separate. Instead of focusing on what we perceive as a dichotomy, we should strive to carry the lessons of the wild and the flow of artmaking into our city streets, our universities, and our businesses. As Shunryu Suzuki said, “You cannot escape, because the whole world is yours.”
I’ve heard a few artists articulate in one way or another that through the work they do, they strive to create the world in which they wish to live. This, to me, is choosing to dwell in the extraordinary. When we create this kind of space for ourselves and others, we’re suggesting that the feelings of interconnectedness and wholeness that we feel when we’re in wild places, or when we’re in the flow of creating, aren’t merely obscure moments of fleeting possibility, but instead the actual truth of our existence.
Something in which not to dwell? Maybe the world would be a better place if we did.
I choose to dwell in these experiences because they make me whole. And that’s something I wish for everyone to experience — and dwell in — for as long as they possibly can.
0 comments