Connecting With Nature

My Westie, Noga, and I are thankfully alone today. I walk north along county road 23, two miles south of Ridgway, Colorado. Snow topped mountains rim the valley, home of farms and cattle ranches. Cows and horses dot the fields of the valley below.

The day awakens brisk and beautiful and flows toward me from the mountain to the east. The gravel crunches beneath my boots. The cool air burns my cheeks. The new sun warms my skin. Magpies, bluebirds, and blue jays sit on the fence posts and in the trees along the road and dash and dart about.

I pause and say hello to two favorite young cows—Brown and Tan. They are indifferent and I move on. A dozen deer, ears perked, stand frozen 30 feet away and watch me pass by. I quit taking photos of them months ago; I have more than I could ever use. The local marmots are in their homes. I see no one and, other than the sounds of nature and my breathing, the air is quiet. I am in a reflective mood.

I look at the mountains and wonder how anyone can believe they can control nature. I think about a recent experience: I drove 12,000 feet above sea level on a narrow path of a trail. I was a few miles east of Silverton, 30 miles south of where I live. A sudden rainstorm washed the clay beneath me away and my jeep began to slide backwards down the mountain perilously close to a steep ledge. Nature reminded me of my powerlessness.

I walk to the white house on the curve of the road that leads into Ridgway, drink some water, wave to the barking yellow lab, and turn around for the walk home. In the spring a couple of hundred elk graze warily in the meadows below me.

I swing my left arm—exercise for a torn rotator cuff muscle—as I walk. The return trip climbs gradually uphill from about 7,200 feet. I breathe faster and deeper and my legs feel the strain. I finish my water. Finally I trudge up the curved and rutted incline of the long driveway to my A-frame home nestled against the side of the mountain. I sit on the picnic table near the backdoor and under the deck; I am hot and wet with sweat. I breathe heavily. I notice Skeeter and Tate—two cats larger than Noga—hunting in the brush.

I mutter an expletive under my breath in acknowledgement of the hard effort. I love this almost daily three-mile walk that puts me close to nature and provides a milieu for creative contemplation.

As I catch my breath I think back to 1994 when my brother Allan and I took a trip to East Africa for 18 days of wildlife photography in Kenya and Tanzania. The animals were excited, spirited, and expressive--they ran, jumped, and played. Prides of lazy lions slept and sunned themselves while mischievous cubs played and irritated their elders who cuffed them gently. Large groups of giraffes loped gracefully across the plains. Two or three cheetah proudly stalked Thompson gazelles. A silent leopard carried a young wildebeest into a tree to feast on for the next two or three days. Elephants lumbered in front of a gigantic and snow covered Mount Kilimanjaro as, filled with excitement, I fumbled with my camera. The daily drama for food played itself out in front of us.

I observed how life in the Ngorongoro Crater, a collapsed volcano with steep walls, had evolved and cooperated so all of the elements fit together to create a balanced whole--an ecosystem upon itself. Nature had evolved the different species to compliment one another. Zebras, with sensitive ears and sharp eyesight, but a weak sense of smell, herd with wildebeest that have a responsive nose but cannot hear or see well. I watched the “chaos” of the annual wildebeest migration as hundreds of thousands of beasts chased the rain.

I began to see the underlying order, programmed genetically over thousands of years, of their seemingly insane behavior. Hundreds of thousands of wildebeest births occur within a three week period during the annual migration to water. This mass birth preserves the species, for predators cannot kill that many young before they can care for themselves.

Wildlife photographer Mitsuaki Iwago calls this underlying order “Okite--a law of natural life that's neither glamorous nor indulgently savage.” Describing his experience in East Africa, Iwago wrote:

"I felt something when I was in East Africa, which I didn't understand. I felt the limitation of my own thoughts, my human experience. My thinking wasn't enough to cover everything that happens there. It seems to me there's some kind of order--of understanding—among the animals, the ground, the atmosphere, the clouds."

As I sat on the picnic table and cooled off, I thought of my dad. He described me as a man who “doesn't stand still for long.” But I stand still during my time in the mountains of southwest Colorado. This is a time for solitude, and a time for reflection. More and more I seek to balance action with contemplation. I require more time to think and ponder—to try to see the patterns and order of life in a chaotic world. I appreciate deeply the beauty of my surroundings, the quiet walks, and the spirituality of the San Juan Mountains that surround me.

At the same time my chosen retreat to the mountains is difficult—like a long vision quest filled with freedom's anguish. As I catch my breath, I decide to go and soak in the hot springs in Ouray—eight miles south at the entrance to the San Juans.

The large hot spring pool sits surrounded by mountains and the town of Ouray, Colorado--a tiny piece of Western history nestled in a bowl at the foot of the San Juans. I relax in the pool, drink water, and watch rock climbers, mountain goats, small avalanches, and the deer that come to feed in the adjacent park. Often I sit quietly for hours, other times I read, and occasionally I talk with regulars and tourists. In the winter the steam rises from the hot water and often I can only see a foot or two in front of me. The pool fills with people when it snows, and white heads appear to float on the water.

As I soaked I remembered fondly the night several years prior when I relaxed in the natural hot spring pool of the Weisbaden motel down the road from the community hot springs pool. A slender man in his twenties with shoulder length blond hair got in the warm pool. We began to talk. I told him how close I came to a deer while I took its photograph. He listened intently and said, “Man, the deer let you get close because you have good vibes.” I thought of how much easier it is to give off good vibes when we are in a vital system.

The universe of the emerging worldview, like the Ngorongoro Crater, lives whole and undivided--created as one entity with its elements interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent. All betterment flows from the totality as the diverse parts interact and organize together in patterns that balance and sustain the essence of the whole. The potential for change remains unlimited and uncommitted. The universe has spirit, purpose, meaning, and mystery.

Humans exist as a presence in nature just as all other species of plants and animals do. People live as part of the unbroken whole--not separate, detached, and superior. Life's meaning flows naturally from our connection with all else in the universe. We live in an alive, creative, and emotional world of choices--a world of gray--a both/and world with little certainty.

This world was never as self-evident as the day I sat in a small skiff in the Baja of California bobbing in light waves. I watched as a 40 foot long, 40-ton great gray whale surfaced slowly beneath the boat and gently introduced her new child to the boat's elated observers.

I peered into the large, serene eye of the mother and wondered what her world was like? Her gentle and knowing return of my excited stare linked us in a mystical moment. I realized that in one slight movement she could destroy the boat and kill its occupants. Instead, she chose to form a relationship with us—a profound choice: kill or relate.

Mother and child floated with the boat for a few minutes. The whales allowed the exhilarated humans to touch them and to lean over and kiss the barnacle covered parent before mother and child submerged slowly and disappeared. For a few short moments the sky, the ocean, the people, the bobbing skiff, and the whale and her child were one. Frances Bacon referred to nature as a, “common harlot.” Bacon was wrong. Nature is a form of love available to each of us. We can learn much from her.

I spent 14 months in the San Juan Mountains and experienced daily nature's beauty and power. I do not doubt that nature will survive people. The real question: Will humanity overcome and sustain itself? I went to sleep every night looking at the vast star-filled sky above the powerful San Juans. Humbled, I gained a fresh perspective on the challenges that face you and me.

Abraham Maslow wrote that the priority to save our world calls us to make the Good Person. He defined the Good Person as:

"This Good Person can equally be called the self-evolving person, the responsible-for- himself-and-his-own-evolution person, the fully illuminated or awakened or perspicuous man, the fully human person, the self-actualizing person…."

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