Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness (Nature Book Series)

by Scott Stillman

These incessant ramblings between visits, Are they real? Job, house, bills, computers, internet, Thoughts, things, cravings, worries, Thoughts, things, thoughts, thoughts… They seem so far away now, Like some other lifetime.

“There are two easy ways to die in the desert: thirst and drowning.”

Walking. Rhythmic walking. When I’m backpacking I’m backpacking. There is nothing else. No phone to answer, no email to check, no bills to pay, no errands to run. Nothing but backpacking. Sure there’s preparation, gear to sort, meals to plan, routes to ponder. But once I start walking, a peace takes over, a simple joy like none other I’ve ever known. There are no distractions. Nothing but Now.

I find that when I open up and surrender to the present moment, accepting it for all its beauty and amazement, the universe guides me to all the right places. Decisions are just decisions. Either answer is correct. Just choose. The universe will take care of us, provided we are grateful, aware. It’s when we fight the present moment that the universe turns against us. Nothing goes our way. Every decision is wrong. We get caught up in our minds, our egos. “If only I had done this, or done that.” Life becomes a struggle.

There exists a heaven. Not in some far-off realm high above the clouds, but here, right here on Earth. A place where the grandest of cathedrals are created, not by man, but by the very hands of God. An island in the sky where stone monuments shoot straight up out of the Earth, granite towers rise 6,000 feet into the clouds, and living hills of lush green velvet roll on for miles. Jade waterfalls cascade down their slopes, one after another, after another. A place of limitless abundance and impossible beauty.

As a human I’m happy enough to climb the peaks in my mind. I see no need to summit. They look majestic enough from down here in the valleys. Besides, I have other agendas. Like how much ecstasy did I feel? How closely did I inspect the ferns, clovers, and tiny gardens of plant life under my feet? I’m not here to tame or conquer, I’m here to connect. To find the gateway. I know it’s out here. If I’m not careful I could miss it.

There is wisdom in anarchy, precision in chaos. Everything here is in its perfect place yet precisely out of order. Straight lines and boxes—the world growing tired of them. Correct grammar, a complete sentence? I don’t want a complete sentence. I want to feel! Words that pierce my soul. Give me that one magically placed word that stops me dead in my tracks, forcing me to stop reading, and tremble. Transcendence! That’s all I ask. Is that too much? And

sit on a rock watching the magic unfold. If I were to die in this moment what would really change? I would be as I was before I was born, forty short years ago. The flowers will still dance, the butterflies will still flutter, the hawks will still soar. But who to contemplate them? Perhaps a small child in a similar meadow on a similar day. A sinking feeling. Deep inside my gut.

This body wants to survive, continue on, as all life wants to persevere. It’s the nature of all things. Yet I can’t help but wonder if in our final moment there is a surrender. If just before the rabbit is eaten by the coyote, there is a flash of peace, a moment of understanding. A transformation will occur, yes, but life will go on, just the same.

In all this open space it’s so easy to think and to breathe. I’m far from the tangle of the thick forests below. I can see weather approaching from a hundred miles, fizzling out before it ever makes it here. There are no humans (besides myself), no machines, no roads, no developments. Just Wilderness. Heartbreakingly pristine Wilderness. The landscape is vast, like the desert, yet with temperatures much more suitable for July.

At home I’d be frantically looking for something to do. Catching up on emails, Facebook, the bank account, the weather. Time is precious, we shouldn’t waste it. Really? Is time precious? What’s more precious, time or the present moment? Up here clock time is gone. Distractions are gone. In their place—peace, pure essence. The essence of life. I’m content to let things be as they are. If it rains let it rain. If it’s windy let it blow. Everything I need I have.

What if there were a secret back-door portal to enlightenment? A shortcut, so to speak. I believe that the answer lies here, in wilderness. The shortcut is the long walk. However, you must go it alone. Once you get past the jitteriness of day one, the cravings of day two, and the loneliness of day three, meditation comes easily and naturally. Months of tension can be released in just a few days.

I feel as though I’m getting close to something. But what? Maybe it’s an end, or a new beginning, a crossroads perhaps, a time to choose. But choose what? Or maybe not to choose, just give up, latch onto a feather in the wind, and set sail on the breeze. Life. Is it a struggle or a breeze? Lately I seem to be choosing struggle, a complex web of thoughts and ideas crashing into each other all at once. I can feel myself drifting further and further into the black hole of incessant mind noise. As I approach the canyon floor the noise in my head begins to subside, drowned out by the soothing sounds of cool running water. It’s cascading down-canyon, winding its way through smoothly polished channels in the sandstone, filling up swimming holes the size of bathtubs. In the shade of a cottonwood, I rest under its rustling leaves, trying to grasp onto my new surroundings. It’s now that I realize the descent from hell has led me to the Garden of Eden.

“When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth.” – Paulo Coelho

“The good fight is the one we fight because our heart asks it of us.” – Paulo Coelho

“You’re out there. Doing what you would die for. Believing, till there’s no turning back.” – Jay Farrar

Wilderness. My problems are over the moment I step out onto the trail, pack loaded, schedule free. For the next few days everything will be new. The past no longer matters, the future disappears, and the present moment comes at me frame-by-frame, in extreme high-definition. It’s the one place I feel completely at peace.

“The best thing you’ve ever done for me, is to help me take my life less seriously. It’s only life after all.” – Indigo Girls

We come from the Earth. We return to the Earth. It happens over and over and over. You might say, we are the Earth. We’ve only to step away from our world of plastic and concrete to understand.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but words on a page can capture what an infinite number of photos cannot. Not merely a still image, but the living, breathing soul of a place.

Many consider this roughing it, but I’d beg to disagree. This is lavish decadence. I’m free from the demands of city life. I have endless opportunity to wander at will, or simply sit and watch the magnificence of creation unfold. It’s all right here, happening before my very eyes. Like the endless summers of childhood, my days are long, enchanting, and full of possibility. This is not roughing it. This is smoothing it.

Perhaps meditation is simply anything we do with our full attention, full awareness, full heart. Anywhere we find truth, or love. Something we do, not to be the fastest, or the best, or to win a prize, or to make a lot of money, but simply because we love it. Whatever it may be. How many of us are trying to love what we do not love? When we find true love, the trying disappears.

The secret to life is now. In every living moment. Whatever that moment may look like. When I finally stop, look around, and see, Actually see for the first time, All the grace and beauty in this world, I realize something profound. The beauty has been here all along, Waiting for me to get out of my head, And into life. Patiently the world awaits. Waiting to celebrate our enlightenment. When we awake, the world wakes up with us, And the entire world is changed in an instant.