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June, 2007
Why Not Stay In The Wilderness?
By Becky Clough, Unity College
Unity, Maine
The late Everest mountaineer and outdoor educator Willi Unsoeld challenged all adventure enthusiasts by presenting, in one of his more famous quotes, one simple question: "Why don’t you stay in the wilderness?" A straightforward, yet undeniably loaded question. What is it that keeps us coming back out of the forests, off the waterrivers and lakes, down from the mountains, and home from the ocean? After any experience with nature, upon resigning ourselves to the smells, sounds, sights and sacred peace and balance that is so available in the wild, why do we come back?
I found myself asking this question day after day upon returning home from the an Outward Bound Wilderness Semester. I had spent 65 days moving only as quickly as my kayak could cut through the ocean, only as steadily as my feet could trek over the varying terrain, only as swiftly as my hands and feet allowed me to climb up a crack. I had adopted the pace of nature, and found it, once again, to be much more appealing than the pace of modern man. How serene it is to walk away from the ground you sleep on, leaving nothing behind, to enjoy the freedoms of the trail, to experience all five senses with such intense purity you fail to remember the life back home. Some of us out there last semester referred to our other lives in the front country as "the real world."". I often wondered how many of my newly developed feelings, senses of awareness and sentiments towards the expeditionary lifestyle could possibly apply to the hustle and noise of the "real world."". To me, the wilderness is a place so sublime and tranquil,; I had a difficult time believing I could mesh the two together. I had the knowledge, motivation and equipment to remain in the backcountry.; Boy, it sure is was tempting to stay out there.
Not long after re-entering the lively metropolis of southern New Hampshire (that seems to be largely comprised of WalMarts, gas stations, buffets, fast food restaurants and beauty salons), I felt absolutely alienated. The pace of nature seemed to be of no importance; it was lost among the reality TV shows and strip malls and highwaysholiday shopping. I was so frustrated - some of the most important elements of who I am, and the experiences I had that allowed me to see what I was made of - felt like they were reduced to distant dreams. I felt like a puzzle piece that no longer fit. I had spent so much of my energy returning to the center of things and cherishing that simplicity, only to re-enter into a society that seemingly celebrates materialism and pretense. I had gone from what most people would consider a very harsh and unpleasant environment, that I was in fact quite comforted by, into a distinctly different culture and planet, with no time to transition. I wanted to pack my bag and drive to the mountains. I wanted to ignore the feelings of not being able to relate to this "real world."
But I know though, that staying immersed in the wilderness for the rest of my days, although tempting, is not a solution tofor this internal struggle. To ignore the realities of modern civilization is to ignore a legitimate awareness, and certainly would not help me to relate. I had experienced an apparent response to this shift in my lifestyle, and to overlook it would be to neglect an inherent responsibility. I had to find ways to make the lessons I had learned and the lifestyle I valued apply in this harsher environment. By going into the wilderness, I had found the clarity of mind to react to the "real world" in a more useful way than if I had never gone out there at all.
Eventually, I realized why it is that we come back from the peaceful and serene, instead of staying there forever. We come back out of the forests, off the waterrivers and lakes, down from the mountains, and home from the ocean with a fresh sense of what we are made of, so that we can carry on in this "real world" in a more vauthenticaluable way. We see and grasp the world around us with a much better understanding of who we are, and therefore possess the ability to apply ourselves with more value and intent. It is through knowing oneself that one can truly understand one’s world to work toward the greater good.
I will finish with Unsoeld’s quote in its entirety, a piece of writing that pointed me towards the arrival of an immensely valuable answer:
"Why don’t you stay in the wilderness? Because that isn’t where it is at; it’s back in the city, back in downtown St. Louis, back in Los Angeles. The final test is whether your experience of the sacred in nature enables you to cope more effectively with the problems of people. If it does not enable you to cope more effectively with the problems - and sometimes it doesn’t, it sometimes sucks you right out into the wilderness and you stay there the rest of your life - then when that happens, by my scale of value; it’s failed. You go to nature for an experience of the sacred...to re-establish your contact with the core of things, where it’s really at, in order to enable you to come back to the world of people and operate more effectively. Seek ye first the kingdom of nature, that the kingdom of people might be realized." - Willi Unsoeld, 1974
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