This year, I lost my pilgrimage to the wild. While Wuhan was still the only city under lockdown, I planned a backcountry trip in Yosemite National Park. I wanted to be awed by the power which can crack a mountain in half and leave sheer vertical cliffs behind.
As majestic as Yosemite Valley is, the purpose of my trip is to ‘get away’: from the crowd, from the roads, from society altogether. Ever since I saw the movie ‘Wild’ (with Reese Witherspoon, based on a memoir from Cheryl Strayed), I’ve taken on the sport of walking in the wilderness for days. Long-distance backpacking; sometimes called ‘through-hiking’. The point is to pick a trail and start walking, without looking back: ideally, without retracing one’s steps. Therefore, it is an exercise in which “there is no other way but through…”
Yosemite was my back-up plan. I secured it after I tried and failed to get a permit for the John Muir Trail: a 211 mile stretch of Sierra Nevadas without crossing a road. The National Park Service issues only 40 permits a day to start the trek from Yosemite Valley. Thousands apply to the lottery. I thought that, as a party-of-one, my chance to get a permit was pretty high. I was wrong.
I could have secured a permit from the other end of the trail, starting a Mount Whitney. But since Mount Whitney is the highest peak in the contiguous USA, starting with an ascent to 14,505 feet of altitude is gruelling. Without the benefit of acclimatization, there is no telling how many days it would take me to reach my first resupply point. More uncertainty means more food, which means a heavier pack, which means more pain and uncertainty. I don’t like to be caught in that sort of vicious loop.
Alternatively, I could also have lied to the Pacific Crest Trail Association to get a permit from them. I could have started way south, at Lake Isabella (near Bakersfield). But the PCTA issues permits only for individuals committed to do 500 continuous miles. And I am not that committed. Moreover, as a general rule, I don’t lie to get what I want: I don’t endorse any deceptive strategies to the ‘game-of-life’ in my actions.
So I ‘settled’ for a Grand Tour of Yosemite National Park. I planned to walk about 120 miles in two weeks: going counter-clockwise around Yosemite Valley. I’d start at the Valley View, hike up to Glacier point, come back down to Illilouette Creek. By the third day, I’d be deep enough in the wild that people would be scarce, my muscles would hurt and I’d be famish by supper time. Then, I’d cross the Clark Range, eat spaghetti at the Merced Lake Camp and squirt around the Cathedral Range — or go right through it, if I felt up for theextra miles. After a resupply day (and shower) at Tuolumne Meadow, I’d spend relatively easy strolling days in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolomne River, cross a non-descript (but I am sure grandiose) forest to have my last ‘wild’ night on the top of El-Capitan. The descent along the Yosemite Falls is apparently quite steep, but I had no choice — that is, if I wanted to get back down to civilization!
Then, the pandemic changed everything. At first, it wasn’t clear if I could go; by April, it became clear that I couldn’t. Yet, I don’t think that I grieved the lost of my pilgrimage until this morning, as I wrote these words and imagined myself being there, being awed by the granite and the tall trees… As I read Peter’s “Wilderness or lack thereof”, my mind understood his meaning yet my heart longed for what we usually call ‘wilderness’.
Peter observed that ‘wilderness’ is a social construct. As far as claims go, it’s not particularly wild. Indeed, without the human need to compulsively categorize everything, there wouldn’t be a distinction between ‘wild’, ‘semi-wild’ and ‘non-wild’ spaces: only varieties of environments. More obvious still: without human beings proliferating adaptively over every speck of this planet, there wouldn’t be any ‘habitats’ which are so specifically ‘human’ that we somehow consider them ‘non-natural’. Without humans, there would only be the world — not as a concept, but a reality. With humans in it, there is also only ‘One World’: even if we feel compelled to categorize it with binaries.
So I agree that the “wilderness has no meaning beyond our species”. In fact, ‘meaning’ itself is a purely human construct. The foxes live, dwell, reproduce and play — but not because it is meaningful to do so… In my understanding, only the human species has a ‘meaning-environment’; ie. a socially-constructed system of concepts which mediates our relationships with the material world. I think that dogs and animals more generally are sentient (ie. they feel and react to their environment in appropriate and adaptive ways — which look to us as intelligence) but I doubt that they do so through conceptual or language-based thinking. I doubt because I can’t know for sure, having never had a conversation with any member of the advanced animal species (ie. dogs, dolphins, apes, octopi).
Thus, I am left with the assumption that their experience of the environment is simply of ‘living in the world’. Meanwhile, for human beings, it gets more complicated: we live in two worlds — one material and one conceptual/linguistic/social. And given our instinctive (?) need to classify, we further divide the material world into the ‘natural’ and the ‘constructed’; ie. the ‘wild’ and the ‘human’.
Reflecting on Peter’s essay, I wondered: What does the concept of ‘wilderness’ mean for human being? As someone who seeks its experience, I agree with Peter that ‘wilderness’ is rather rare. Yet, I know that I vehemently pursue it and here is why: I want to see a world in which the human is absent. Obviously, I fail every time — if only because I am there too, as the person looking at a nature unadulterated by human activities. Thus, our concept of ‘wilderness’ is somewhat illogical: for if we define ‘wilderness’ as the space which has not been penetrated by human activities, then the very act of ‘exploring the wild’ tames it, humanizes it. When I backpack, I not only see the vastness of the mountains and the pristine lakes; I also see the paths that others have treaded, the branches that crews have cut, even the trash people left behind. When it’s not too extensive, I pick up that trash and walk it out; if only to save the next ‘wilderness seeker’ from having to face the remnants of an irresponsible humanity.
Bottom line, I crave this experience of the wild. So even if our collective concept of ‘wilderness’ is shaky, this is a real need for me. In the wilderness, I feel that the Universe puts me into my proper place: I become a small sentient and cognizing being amidst a vast Universe which is indifferent to me, insofar as it would be (almost) the same without me there. This feels ‘right’ in a way that nothing else does: except maybe unconditional love. It reminds me that all other thoughts I can have about my place in the world are only narratives or mental constructs that we socially generate and reproduce, often without considering ‘nature’ as a stakeholder in the equation. That is not only wrong, it is also false. There is a vastness beyond the humanly constructed world. The ‘self’ might be the origin of our perceptions, but it is not the ‘centre of the Universe’. This planet existed without humans for millions of years: changing at the speed of continents bumping into each other, wind and water eroding rocks, vegetation growing and decaying. When I walk in the ‘wilderness’, I am reminded of the vast complexity of this self-regulating system we call Earth, our ultimate home: I am awed and humbled by its raw beauty, its intricacy.
Peter claims that we need not go to ‘wild places’ to experience the sublimity of nature. Moreover, nature is everywhere, including where we are actively designing and constructing our environment. I wholeheartedly agree. Still, I’d argue that it’s easier to realize that there is vastness beyond and beneath our ‘human world’ (both constructed and conceptual) in places where our collective imprint is limited to a two-foot wide path of packed earth.
In Foucaultian terms, I am seeking a ‘limit-experience’ in which I can exist at the limit of the socialized world. This allows me to face and reflect on the attribute of my self, the society and what lays beyond it. Thus, my backcountry trips are a ‘pilgrimage’; spiritual in nature because the ‘wilderness’ is where I recalibrate myself. I get to pause my daily lifestyle — full of things and thoughts — to focus on one simple task: putting one foot in front of the other. At some point, this ceases to be pain-free. Yet I welcome these sensations in my body because it gives me an opportunity to remember that I am not simply ‘a floating mind’. I am my body too: even when it is out-of-shape, just like now, after months of sedentary emotional-eating. When the going gets tough, I focus on my breathing and simply go through this self-chosen ordeal.
One step at a time, I quiet my mind. I start to live in the moment instead of in my head. I welcome this nature alien to me. Instead of my usual conceptual thinking, I inhale the dampness in the air. I have to make sure that I don’t think too hard, too deeply, because I can’t risk an injury caused by stumbling on a root or rock.
I walk alone and shall be alone for the duration of my pilgrimage. Yes, I address pleasantries to the other hikers I encounter. But frankly, I’m often too absorbed in a deep meditative fog to say anything meaningful. As my walk lengthens, my calm deepens. The voice in my head comes and goes, sometimes staying silent for long minutes, maybe even hours.
At first, I thought that my need for the ‘wild’ originated from a desire to be in a world without society: maybe not ‘live’ in such world, but at least sporadically visit. In removing from my sight every trace of our collective humanity, I imagine that human constructions don’t exist. Obviously, this is an illusion: even the path on which I walk is a human creation. On the Appalachian Trail, I experienced a moment in which I cursed that man (for it was surely a man) who thought that a hike in the woods required ascending every peak. Ceaseless ‘ups and downs’ is the name of the AT game; pointlessness is often expressed as the main psychological challenge.
Still, to ‘get away from all souls’ is an appealing thought. Personally, I’ve had my fair share of reservations about my desire to belong in this social world, in this global civilization, during this second millennial upheaval. Sometimes, I wonder: to which of the ‘natural’ or ‘social/human’ world do I most belong? Which has won my allegiance? Frankly, if I am required to repress my inner voice, to act against my will and self-deny my own conscience in order to belong to society, then I wholeheartedly prefer the ‘wild’.
I’ve learned, from the ordeals of my youth, that self-torturing my soul for the benefit of society (or others) is no longer something that I am willing to do. Period. I will live at the ‘edge of the world’ — experiencing loneliness and pain if need be — instead of dwelling in a place where ‘I’ (ie. my self/soul/character) can’t exist. And with the social, human, conceptual world all around us, sometimes I feel that I am apt to lose my-self in all this buzzing meaning. In the wilderness, since I am the only human, I can be assured that I am the sole source of ‘human energy’. Thus, I get a chance to reflect on what is ‘me’ versus what is alien or different from me.
Disclosing my inner core in this writing, I now realize that part of what I seek in the wilderness is the absence of ‘the gaze’: Sartre’s word for the look that others give us, a look through which they interpret ‘me’ . Most of that ‘gaze’ is banal — most people only look at the surface of a ‘self’ to decide (overly quickly) what it is made of. Stereotypes exists because people interpret from easy clues: gender, class, profession, clothing, accessories. They categorize ‘selves’ in the same way that we categorized the ‘wild’, ‘semi-wild’ and ‘non-wild’ at the beginning of this essay. Often, they favour assigning ‘known’ or ‘socially-constructed’ identities over taking the time to understand eccentricities. I am one of the ‘weird’ ones: I have always been. Long ago, I have made my peace with the fact that I baffle some of my interlocutors, especially those who seek shortcuts in getting to know me.
[ Note that I’ve spent decades actively trying to know myself, as the Delphic maxim educates. So I am the one baffled when one claims to ‘get’ me from the get go. Such a quick judgement reflects more of their lack of openness and curiosity than it does to my ability to present or project my uniqueness.]
Deep in the woods, I get to experience my ‘self’ in the absence of these categories. ‘I’ can be. No one is there to explicitly or implicitly tell me ‘who to be’. No one imposes their filter/paradigm/worldview onto me. I am free of the threat of being used instrumentally. This is liberating and exhilarating! But it’s also disconcerting: I am faced with the requirement to ‘fill’ my own consciousness with my originality. I am faced with the need to be at peace with my ‘self’, to be able to live with only what I can self-generate. Psychically, it means that I must either accept who I am or self-transform to the best of my abilities. Physically, it means embracing simplicity: for all that I possess while in the ‘wilderness’, I must carry with every step.
Inevitably, there comes a time in my pilgrimage where I find the limit of ‘who I am and can be’ as the sole member of a species. Indeed, interactions of all types are so fundamental to the human identity that, through my wilderness experiences, I actualize only a negation of most of my human condition. Yet, this experience of shedding unwanted weight (ie. fat, gear, worries or socially-imposed constraints) let’s me refocus on the ‘self’ that I am creating through my actions, even if that action is simply walking.
After some number of days, I start to desire contacts with others. I yearn for my husband, whose love leaves me more breathless than the purest, most sublime mountain view. I want to seen, mostly by my friends and family, who do take the time to appreciate — even when they may not fully understand — the intricacies of my personality. As importantly, in those few days or weeks of retreat, I’ve summoned the courage to live bravely and fully, with as much integrity and transparency as possible.
I know that, in the wilderness, I can stand ‘as I am’: proud and strong, self-reliant and accountable, at peace with my thoughts and activities. This experience tells me that I can be as brave in society. For that reminder alone, I need to visit the wilderness periodically.
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