Getting Out: Political and religious opinions are often
stridently held and people’s sensitivity about both runs close to
the surface.
But the experience of nature is so fundamentally spiritual that
it is impossible to talk about going into the wild without raising
quasi-religious notions.
If you want to stay out of trouble in a social situation, steer clear of politics and religion. That’s the rule, and it’s a good one. Political and religious opinions are often stridently held and people’s sensitivity about both runs close to the surface.
But the experience of nature is so fundamentally spiritual that it is impossible to talk about going into the wild without raising quasi-religious notions. Muir, Thoreau, Leopold, Emerson; these and many others who have written thoughtfully about time spent in nature describe the experience as beyond simply sensory. They feel something more. They are transported.
My high school geometry teacher required our class to read “Flatland,” a book that describes a world that is a plane, flat like a piece of paper, inhabited by squares, triangles, circles and other flat shapes. When a cylinder comes to visit, it intersects the plane of Flatland only as a circle. The cylinder tries to describe its real shape to the inhabitants of Flatland, but they are dumbfounded. In their flat world, they have no experience of “up” or “down.” They simply cannot comprehend what the cylinder is talking about.
I believe that in our world there is some transcendent truth that is beyond my comprehension. Like the circles and polygons in Flatland, I don’t understand it because I can’t. But that’s fine. I simply choose to accept and embrace it as this great and wondrous thing that I’ll never truly know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to sneak a peek behind the curtain now and then. If I cannot fully comprehend the transcendent truth, can I catch a glimpse now and then?
This is what time in nature gives me and all of us. There are no authors, translators or speakers to color the message. The connection is direct – no filters, nothing second hand. Sometimes, carrying a heavy pack up a steep mountain trail, chest pounding as your lungs reach for oxygen in the thin mountain air, it seems like just a lot of silly work. Then, that evening, the setting sun casts a warm glow on the peaks across the valley, or the next morning you witness sunrise through the clouds of a clearing storm. Down deep, there’s a little shudder. You know that in that brief instant you glimpsed something greater than a view.
These thoughts about spirit and nature were brought to my mind by a new book that I happened upon entitled “Gloryland.” It is a novel about Elijah Yancy, a child of former slaves, born on the day the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Jan. 1, 1863. Elijah’s free spirit is likely to lead to his death in bigoted Spartanburg, South Carolina, so he leaves his family for a different life and adventures unknown. After walking to Nebraska, Elijah enlists in the U.S. Cavalry and begins a series of adventures that lead to an assignment to protect newly created Yosemite National Park.
In Yosemite, Elijah finds his spiritual home. Author Shelton Johnson, through Elijah’s voice, beautifully captures the way spirit and nature can come together to allow us to fleetingly experience something beyond our ken. Not every metaphor is a home run, but by and large the book is a poem, a love letter to wilderness. The book’s jacket also notes that Shelton Johnson, a ranger at Yosemite, will be featured in Ken Burns’ upcoming documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.
There are other windows to the transcendent truth – music, art, scriptures – but I would trade any of those for an hour under an oak or an afternoon by a mountain stream.
