Growing up I had only a casual relationship with the great wilds of California. From a young age my sister and I were taken camping in the family camper, a 1950’s Ford F-250 pickup that had been chopped and turned into a one-off, handmade vacation on wheels by my grandfather. At one point in time it had a Ford 429 so my grandfather could pull his boat up the grades without hesitation. When I was around ten the camper was sold because it got little use and my mother deemed it an eyesore and the family outings to Mammoth, Lassen and Death Valley, to all the intoxicatingly beautiful places I had come to enjoy, promptly ended. So too ended the relationship I had with California’s mysterious wilds, wilds whose secrets I had been too young and too distracted to discover. At 14 I returned to the high Sierras with my father for a 4 day backpacking trip. Outfitted with antiquated gear as old as my beloved camper, terrible food and a little trepidation, I embarked on a trip that would change my life. I found in the backcountry an alien and disquieting world that was at the same time strangely peaceful and homey. It was a place that played with my emotions, stirring them like eddies in the countless streams and pools we passed on our hike.
Today, every time I step into the trees, committing the soles of my boots to follow the miles of serene trails that beckon me, I am transported back to that fateful backpacking trip when I was fourteen, reconnected to the emotions I felt, and reminded of the many reasons I have continued to venture into the wilds. I believe that Man has a deep need to be in nature, in places not yet maligned by his hand, and I believe that it stems from the symbiosis we once had with our world and a need to complete that ancient and biological connection. It is a connection that no matter how eloquent and grand my prose it is nearly impossible for me to fully relate. Hiking is for me about self-discovery and how there are things about yourself and life that you can only discover by venturing into the wild.
Beautiful places immediately educe from observers a need to capture them so that they might in turn relate the power and awesomeness of them to another. This is why you see tourists greedily snapping photos of mountains, trees, and squirrels. The English language is filled with words that I cannot help but believe came about largely in response to our attempt to capture and put meaning to the explosive emotions that nature elicits in us. The story and images of a trip into the wilds is the experience of emotion itself and it is the meaning, yet its relation is a skeletal facsimile of these things. In this way the accounting should not be an attempt to explain these things to the uninitiated or a superficial representation of them, but rather a mutual sharing among those with similar understandings. For a long time I struggled with trying to explain the way nature made me feel. I took countless pictures and scribbled innumerable descriptions, always hoping to look back and find in my pictures and words everything that I felt, distilled into something I could easily share. It is a result I have yet to achieve.
The curiosity of nature is the tendency for feelings and insights to swell and become increasingly profound the deeper into the backcountry you venture and the longer your stay there is. For me, it takes a day, sometimes two, before I can shake off the city and all of its obligations and limitation. From a physical standpoint it is like there is some minimum distance from civilization that I must trek before I begin to be restored. It takes some time and some hiking before I can fall into the rhythm of the trail. When you find this rhythm you hike without care for time. You wear the day as it wears on.
Nature can be overwhelming. It holds answers and truths that can come in a flood strong enough to wash the foundations from your beliefs. Backpacking has given me a strong suspicion that society, with all of its ugliness and problems, is an aberration, an accident, a cosmic mistake and a blight on our species and our planet. Sometimes when sitting on top of some remote peak, naked of society except for the clothes I wear and the pack I carry, I become nervous of venturing any deeper. A fear washes over me and I am gripped with the feeling that if I were to travel too deep, or stay too long, I might not be able to come back to what I know is waiting for me. And it is the dance with this unsettling feeling for which I eagerly plan and await my next trip into the backcountry.
