The Journey Versus Easy Access

“A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.” -Edward Abbey

In Desert Solitaire, a narrative by Edward Abbey, he writes that he sees the wilderness and the parks as places that should remain as untouched an unaltered as possible, regardless of the difficulty accessing it would be for some of the population. His meditations on how he sees modern man and his need to move quickly through time, getting places quickly in their cars, is solid philosophy. At least as solid as the fluid essence of philosophy can be.

It is difficult to see him as right in his answers to the problems that he outlines. Problems such as paving the wilderness to reach key points of interest and landmarks, often at the expense of destroying much wilderness in this process. I believe he is well intentioned, his hearts certainly in the right place. Here is where I would recommend that you should read this book. With an open mind. Slowly, with consideration at a walking pace and not our normal barreling forward with a reckless abandon pace.

I remember when I was a young kid my own parents took me to the Lake of the Clouds, nestled among the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I distinctly remember a spectacular and challenging hike and climb to reach the overview to view the vista of the lake. Many years later, I took my own children to this spot, but instead of the long hike and climb, we drove right to the top on a paved road, took a few constructed steps to the overview, and there we were. I felt distinctly like someone, a traveler perhaps, whose land no longer matched the map held in his hand, in my memory. The site was still spectacular but my children missed the journey, a journey that was just as much a part of the experience as the beauty of the overlook. We did see a sow black bear and her cubs cross a paved road and navigate over the steel guardrails that were installed to keep the motorists from plunging into Lake Superior. The bear sighting is memorable but the habitat we viewed it in was somewhat questionable. (We saw bears in the UP on my vacation trip as a child as well, in both natural surroundings as well as at the local U.P. dumps the bears would frequent in search of an evening snack.)

Isn't part of life, and its experiences of the journey through time and across defined space, worth some effort? Some sweat equity, some blisters and bruises, a case of poison ivy or insect bites would only add to the experience. Can the modern feeling I experience, that of having somehow broken connections with nature and its multitude of perils, joys, hardships, wonder, challenges, initiative, and efforts, be reestablished?

 

Impossibilities Lost

"Practice only impossibilities."
--John Lily

Impossibilities. How could you practice such things? They must be closely related to imagination. They are those things, those wonders, that lie outside the borders of what we know and understand.

There seems to be fewer of them--those things that are in the category of impossibilities--as we humans become more and more civilized and inoculated against wonder of any sort. Human beings have seem to have grown up, so to speak. We have went from living around a fire burning at the mouth of a cave surrounded by mysteries of the surrounding terrain, to what living is now. The noises, sights, and textures of being alive have become predictable and have been explained to us by wise and foolish men. Jean de La Fontaine summed up how mysteries are vanquished from the human experience when he explained that "Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish. We sail oceans, travel at the speed of sound, dive in the deepest ocean, and travel across the vacuum of space. All things that would have seemed miraculous acts to the ancients. Especially those that sat around the ancient fires. Even fire to them of the past was an impossibility made possible. Trying to understand all this is what makes my weak soul stronger somehow.

But there remains many, many tiny fragments of wonder--and I would put forth impossibilities--that when you look closely at this world that we exist in, you can still find them. I was cleaning out a birdhouse and I came across what I thought was a bumble bee and upon closer examination I discovered it was a moth. It seems impossible to understand the evolutionary marvels of nature. Creation is a delightfully wondrous place. I am trying very hard to hold back trying to explain to myself everything and just to delight in it.

Below is the hummingbird moth. My lovely bride captured it magnificently on her phone's camera.