“To
go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from
society,” from Emerson's "Nature"
Solitude is
something that I think about a lot. Rilke talks about it extensively, and one
of the main things that stands out to me is that he not only endorses and lives
it, but he also recommends against it. He notes how solitude is not for
everyone—only those who can truly handle being “alone” should even attempt it.
I think that solitude is one of those things that always sounds great in
theory, and probably everyone at least thinks about it, but it’s definitely not
something to be taken lightly.
Sometimes,
I think that I would love to be that person who just goes out into the wild and
lives. That’s it: just lives. It seems ideal; why not? Before all of this
modern technology and cars and indoor plumbing—before all of that—people were
really connected with nature. “The wild” was something to be explored;
something to learn about; something to seek solace and adventure in; something to be feared and adored. I wish that we could get that back, but modern
lifestyles are difficult to recover from. Even if I go for a walk, I will often
listen to my iPod or check my phone for a text message. If it weren’t for my
sanity (in listening to music) and my career-path (in requiring communication),
I would gladly toss those items out the window and be alone.
Yet even as
I type this, I know that it is a lie. Lately, the people that I talk to most
have been silent. I mean silent. I
haven’t heard from them in weeks, and I when I send them a message, I get no
response. However, thanks to the lovely Facebook, I see that they are still
posting and therefore, still alive. It’s really annoying though; why do we invest
so much into relationships that often fail or aren’t worth as much to the other
party as they are to us? The biggest question from all of this is: how do we
break from these societal ties that make us think that we need to be constantly
in communication with other people?
I think
that’s one of the main problems that Emerson had: he couldn’t go into the wild
himself because he was still tied to those European ideals and sense of
community. Is it possible that we are just not cut-out to live in solitude because
of the modern ways in which we are raised? Of course writers like Rilke and
Emerson are few and far between, though there are many writers today. So it is
with solitary beings as well. I want solitude like I want to stop eating candy
bars, but I’m as attached to my iPhone as I am to the Reese’s Peanut Butter cup
that I’ll devour when I get home.
“We
all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me
until this stormday, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in
the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true;
but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than
tree-wavings—many of them not so much," from Muir's "A Wind-Storm in the Forests"
This
reminded me of a popular quote about trees that goes something along the lines
of, “If you don’t like where you are, then change it. You are not a tree.”
Assuming that I am at least close to quoting it correctly, I just have to say
that I never understood that. Trees are not stagnant to me. They have spirits
and motion and life.
As a
result, I was really drawn to the selected passage from Muir. First of all, I
love the connection of cosmos with Earth. I think too often, they are taken as
separate entities, but, Muir is right—we are all in the milky way together.
That aside, I definitely agree that trees make journeys. I think that it is
silly to take on a perspective of only human, where we think of ourselves as
the only entities who can move and live and breathe.
One of the
best parts about this quote is actually thinking about the trees’ travels.
Grown trees are often so much bigger than us; we will never grow to such
heights—yet, they sway. That motion seems disconnected from our notions of
time. As I feel the breeze hit my face, it feels more tense, quicker , than
what I see passing through the trees. There is almost a delay, as if each sway
of the branches, twenty seconds in people-time, were three years in tree-time.
Our long journeys that we take throughout our lives may seem like a lot to us,
but, in fact, we all just take a multitude of little journeys, maybe just
few-year ventures, just like the sighing trees.
Response to Time in Nature 6/23/12
As I sat at
the picnic table attempting to read, something caught my peripheral. Some white
speck was moving in contrast to the dark, still table. I tried to ignore it as I
did with the voices from a boating lesson or the creaking oars drifting by on
the lake. Curiosity got the better of me, or maybe I was just looking for any
distraction, any excuse to take a break from reading. I looked toward the white
speck.
I have
never seen a caterpillar so wild. It was a symmetrical punk—dark, brown tufts
of hair, standing up like they’d been straight-ironed, on its front and behind;
three white balls like Q-tip ends stuck to its middle. Were they egg sacs? Just
part of the design? It meandered along. Really, it’s feet looked like suction
cups with their forced movements, yet as a whole, the small being looked
graceful, deliberate. It walked across the first plank, started the
ninety-degree-drop, then reached across to the next plank an inch away.
I was
shocked to see the caterpillar make the stretch and wondered how its squishy
body managed such stability. Once across, it turned left and kept going,
crawling across the table to the far end. When the end of the table approached,
the caterpillar reached out, as if for another plank, but upon feeling none, it
crawled straight down.
I never
touch caterpillars because:
1) They freak me out.
Anything with that many legs cannot be trusted.
2) They tickle when all of those legs
crawl across my pores and flirt with the thin hairs on my knuckles that I never
knew were there until the caterpillar brisked them.
3) With all of those crazy colors and
funky hair, they’ve got to poisonous.
I looked at
the yellow spots and the contrast of colors on the furry critter. Are they
poisonous in bite? Is there something in their fur? Is it even fur? I wanted to
put the caterpillar under investigation and ask for answers to everything
that I don’t know.
I wondered
what it would be like to have nothing going on in my mind. My first thought
when I saw the caterpillar seemingly aimlessly venturing in, what I think is, a
big world (and must seem endless to the caterpillar) was that it must be great
to just be. Is that even possible for humans? We’re so caught up in infinite
thought processes, and we’re so tied down by language.
The
language of a caterpillar:
.:...:...:...:...:.........::....:::....:...:...:...:...:::.......::::...:.......:......
Even though
my first thought was that the caterpillar had no thoughts, I can’t help but
imagine some map in his mind, some internal compass directing him where to go
across that table. And, naturally, if he thought anything at all, he spoke
Portuguese.
Response to Time in Nature 6/23/12
When I lie
on the ground, the sounds in the woods seem illuminated. The chipmunks dancing
through last fall’s leaves are deer blindly building a trail; the birds lightly
flitting and calling are children running and screaming across a field. I
wonder how I haven’t heard them before. No, I have heard them, but they just
sounded like background noise then. Now, they are the only noise—aside from the
bulldozer in the distance and the hum of cars on a distant highway. It seems like
there is no escaping modern living, but so often, nature escapes me; how is
that?
I think
about morning. At home, I go outside and something about the cool air seems to
make the birds louder—their harmonies and responses echo between the trees. As
I drive down the hill, twelve bunnies run in front of my car and twenty-four
chipmunks sit nibbling on stones along the side of the road. The world is
alive.
I think
about afternoon. I go outside, and I can hear the heat waves bouncing off the
air—stuffed with molecules so thick that it becomes difficult to breathe. I
hear cars. I hear people. I wonder where the chipmunks are hiding.
As I sit on
a bench, I hear a rustle beneath me. I look, ready to lift my legs to safety if
anything freaky is down there. I slightly jolt as two chipmunks race into view.
They come from opposite directions and pause about a foot away from each other
and only inches from my toes. They both look at me. I look at them. They look
at each other. I’m still looking at them. And in that moment where their eyes
meet, their glance is so awkward, like secret lovers who have just been found
out, but they try to pretend it didn’t happen as they turn and run in the
directions from which they came.
I watch
both of the chipmunks reach the woods. One jolts up a tree; the other runs in
small circles on the ground before deciding on a different tree to mount.
Leaves crackle. Small toes pitter up pieces of bark. A moment passes.
Response to Time in Nature 6/26/2012
I ventured
into the woods without direction, just to see where they would lead. I decided
to follow Throeau’s advice of just going wherever my own two feet would guide
me. Of course, I ended up lost—is there such a thing as lost? (We are never
really far from home.) It wasn’t long though before I found a small trail. I
thought at first it may have been from deer, but then the consistency of its
wear seemed too planned for un-patterned four-footed beings. A bike trail,
maybe? It soon led to a much wider path—for hiking or maybe horses. The
hoof-prints of horseshoe and deer gave away the instant connection that
humanity would impact any inch of soil we could touch.
There
weren’t any climbable trees. I was losing hope of finding my heightened escape
when I saw it—a giant ‘L’ leaning obtusely at 125 before immediately shifting
straight skyward. I removed myself from the path and walked toward it, planning
my approach. A small knot provided an immediate foothold as I pulled myself
onto the tree.
The poor
traction of my sneakers left my feet slipping as I grasped further up with my
hands, slowly maneuvering my way. When I got to the corner of the ‘L’, I let my
bum flop onto the slanted bark. Propping my feet, I took off my shoes and socks
and let my toes grasp the tree’s skin to keep me from sliding back down. I
leaned back onto the trunk and closed my eyes, imagining that I was an
extension of the tree.
Silence
cannot persist here. The breeze, the birds, the bugs—it all echoed through me.
So, also, did humanity. Beyond my being, I could hear the distant humming
highway. Even here, well into the woods, the sounds of man could not evade the
calling air. I wished that I could turn it off—mute the commercials so that I
could better enjoy the nature channel. Gosh, even my metaphors turn into technological
references of modern making.
Kayaking in
Florida this past spring, I fell in love with the open water. I yearned to
venture towards that infinite horizon that left so much unanswered. As I’d
point my boat south, reaching for the un-seeable shore, my vision dizzied with
the thought of actually being caught with nothing around me—no way of escaping
the floating craft that determined my survival. I resolved to always keep one
eye on the mangrove islands that pervaded the glades—one step removed from
humanity, yet always safely within distance of return to the comforts of
knowing where my next paddle would lead. The Gulf called, but, like Thoreau, I
could not fully indulge in answering the echoing waves.
In the
tree, I focused, like Abram, my
attention to the details of nature, tuning out all other distraction,—be it the
highway or the rushing waters as in his Balian cave—and I let an uncertain
silence pervade the continuous thrumming, echoing on the edges of my eardrum. Now I could read.
At 1:28,
the pages of my book began to glow; my pupils contracted to small ants,
skimming from left to right, but the words couldn’t hold my attention. I looked
for the source of light, a rarity in such covered woods with sunlight blocked
from the branching leaves that reached for each other, like Michelangelo’s God
and Adam. The breeze sparked that touch, allowing light to briefly reach my
page.
The
mesmerizing sensation of light dappling the forest echoed the waters when
sunbeams, at the peak of mid-afternoon, would dance along rolling crests,
creating a glittering array. Dulled by the reflection of color versus water’s
shine, the light hopped from leaf to leaf, making its way to the ground in
hopeful spurts—just enough to quench the photosynthetic thirst of the plants
below.
Response to Time in Nature 6/27/2012
I was
looking forward to kayaking because I like being out on the water. Floating,
itself, is an interesting spectacle. When I first started paddling, my mind was
focused on time: was two hours too long to rent the boat for such a small lake?
I started out across the water, aiming to reach the other side of the lake,
past the swimming area. When I realized that I would be there in less than ten
minutes, I realized that this wasn’t just about rowing.
I paused,
letting the weak current drag my kayak in small beats. I lifted my feet from
the cockpit and rested them on top of my boat, feeling the sun dry the water
droplets that had splashed on my legs. Leaning back onto my elbows, I closed my
eyes. Nothing came to mind. Such meditation seemed foreign to me—always busy
and thinking and re-thinking every scenario.
I decided
to warm my face in the sun too, so I raised my neck, lifting my face
skyward like a turtle basking in late afternoon. I could hardly feel the small
bumps of current beneath me, and the world seemed to be still, save for the
shrinking shoreline in front of me. The water has a way with warping distances to
seem farther.
When I
opened my eyes, another kayaking was zooming past. He nodded at me, and I gave
a small tilt of my head and slight smile in return. Had he been closer, he
probably would have said something about what a nice day it was and how great
the water felt. I definitely was not about to interrupt my contemplation with
speech, though my internal voice started up again.
She told me
that it was weird how it looked like the kayaker was going so fast. I wondered
if I went that fast too. When you’re actually in the boat, it doesn’t seem like
much—you move; the water moves; the trees are standing still, but you could
swear that they were walking too, like when you are the passenger in a car or
on a train, and you focus your eyes on the closest trees, and they look you are passing them really fast. Then you focus on farther trees or an approaching
billboard, and they are stationary; your speed hasn’t changed, but it feels
different; the item in focus seems to reach you slower.
I put my
feet back into the cockpit—my kayak cocooned around me, and I snuggled in,
imagining I was floating above ground as in the hammocks tied between trees at
the shoreline campsites. As I reached the edge of the lake, I passed a group in
a canoe. Two men were on either end of the boating, rowing in sync, while a
woman sat in the middle, perched and poised, sunglasses resting on her face;
a daschaund yapped under her left arm. Her face jerked towards the dog, and
just as quickly, she smacked it on the head with her free hand. “Shut up!” I
heard her snip; she sounded even more annoying than the dog.
As I
watched them float away, I kept paddling. When I reached the edge of the lake,
I paused, feeling slightly disappointed. I looked around—the park seemed pretty
void; there weren’t even many people at the beach, which was still well within
my sightlines. With a burst of giddiness, I rowed the right side of my paddle
backwards, the left forwards, and continued this pattern until I completed a
full-circle pivot. Then I laughed at my own idiocy and began paddling back to
the other end of the lake.
I looked at
my watch. 3:45. I still had an hour and a half to play with the boat. I decided
that it would be fun to take a closer look at the edges of the lake. The
vegetation varied, and I thought I might see some interesting critters there
too. I began my scaling of the circumference of the lake.
I got off
to a rough start. As I paddled, I paid more attention to the shore than where I
was going. Not only did I end up caught in shallow water, but I nearly floated
right over a fishing line. I looked up just soon enough to paddle away from the
transparent line. I sheepishly apologized to the fishermen, who sat
complacently in foldable camp chairs, and continued my adventures. I felt like
an early explorer, navigating by water to investigate the land.
