Extra-Ordinary Wilderness

Yesterday, I went for a walk about a half-mile outside of town. I came across a woman and her massive male husky. He was vi brant, jumping in and out of bushes and tall grasses, running through the open fields, sniffing here and there, and chasing deer across a hillside. This gorgeous animal was completely in his element. It brought me great joy to observe him. It opened my heart. My thinking came to a halt.

In the fading light of day, I sat down in the hummocks of grass and began to really take in the beauty around me. The pine trees glowed. The foothills, dying shrubbery, and all the undergrowth were radiant and crisp. I saw a coyote come over the crest of a hill, traverse downward, stop, lift his white neck, and howl into the air of the setting sun. Down the valley, another coyote replied with great enthusiasm. The sharpness of their voices struck a deep place of resonance inside me and encouraged me to notice several varieties of birds calling back and forth to one another and to hear the crickets chirping. During this long stretch of time, it was as if I was not even there; I was everywhere — in the coyotes’ song, in the crispness, and in the rich and living landscape. A deep peace, stillness, and bliss overcame me. And curiously, and amazingly, there was no "I" to experience this, only the omnipresence of God.

This is what might classically be called a mystical experience and yet it happened in a pause at the end of my day, in the midst of a very busy time, within a mile of my house. Similar experiences are a commonplace occurrence in my life recently. Not that they are common in the sense of being dull and routine, but common in the sense that they are becoming ordinary to my life, and in that, extraordinary. In the neutrality of nature, I open up to a presence that is both in me and far beyond me, a presence that reaches out into the infinite unknown of the sky and the material world before me. The recognition of this bounty of presence is becoming such an integral fabric of my life, both in and out of so-called wilderness, that what is starting to seem more unusual and strange are the times when I am not experiencing this openness. It is an inherent and integral part of who I am — and of who we are — to experience wonder, joy, and abundance.

The selections in this chapter point to the magic found in wilderness, from vast experiences of the mystical and transpersonal found in remote and wild places, to the simplicity, richness, and mystery discovered in our backyards, gardens, and city parks. It is my experience that there is no place nature and magic cannot be found. Wherever we go we find wilderness — even within the walls of our homes, where we are confronted with the unexplainable mystery and beauty of our own living. Wilderness has j no walls; I have deliberately combined radically different ends of the spectrum of experienced wilderness to emphasize this point.

Seeing the smallness of our human lives against the unrestrained expanse of nature into which we have been born, we are deeply and gratefully humbled. Through this seeing, our attention may be turned away from the confines of our humanness and toward the depths of our nature, and in this act we grow immeasurably. We no longer perceive nature as something out there that we periodically visit, but as something that we carry inside of us wherever we are.