I’m currently on a 7-week road trip with my folks, traveling up through British Columbia, Yukon, Alaska the Pacific Northwest, and down the California coast. It’s a trip that includes about a half-dozen National Parks. We are camping with a small (two person) teardrop trailer and a tent. The beauty of the natural world has been stunning. I appreciate the fact that there were some wise individuals who had the foresight and vision to set aside these wonders before our insatiable lust for development devoured them. What I’ve observed along the way is a culture suffering fatally from Nature Deficit Disorder.
When someone goes to visit National Parks in the U.S. and Canada they will quickly discover two types of people. Those who are there to be in the landscape and feel it, and those who are there to check it off their list. I’m part of the latter since we were traveling great distances and really just wanted to see what these parks were about. In hindsight, I wish we could have explored each park in depth but it wasn’t feasible given our route and the time we had to cover it. Don’t get me wrong, our trip has been incredible, it’s just that we had to deal with those who were just there to take pictures. Unfortunately I found myself doing the same at times.
If we look at the concept of National Parks, preserves, and designated wilderness areas, we can see the debacle that is civilization. After all, whom do we think we’re preserving these areas from? When we have to drive to locations to look at mostly untouched landscapes that says a great deal about our societal choices. People are literally starving for the natural world. Anytime a large mammal came into view people would lose their minds. Cameras were clicking away as they inched dangerously close to a being that could kill them in a blink of an eye. Any common sense usually went out the window when an animal stepped on the scene.
As I read the placards describing the indigenous people, who once solely occupied these wonderful places, an incredible sorrow grows in the pit of my stomach. The sorrow I feel is for the loss of lives, the loss of cultures and for not being able to live my own life connected to such beauty. Instead I admire it from a distance but have no skill set to be an active part of it. I, like so many others, am out of place in a world I call home. I’m an outsider on the only planet I will ever know.
I live off-grid next to the largest designated wilderness in the lower forty-eight. I don’t have indoor plumbing or heating or cooling systems in my dwelling. My Mongolian ger (yurt) is located in a beautiful valley overlooking the last free flowing river in New Mexico. One would think I have incredible connections to my surroundings. I don’t. I’m working on it but I have miles to go. I’ve been moving towards the exit of city life but years of conditioning takes time to recognize and overcome. I’m fortunate because when my trip ends I will return to a natural setting instead of a bustling city. My transition will be fairly smooth. For many others the transition back from the wilderness may bring on feelings of grief and loss. It may be a loss they cannot describe. Our very DNA craves something many of us have never experienced. It craves a connection we are now oblivious to.
Today most folks are either living in or moving to cities. It’s difficult to live without conveniences when we become dependent upon them. Our dependence has cost us more than we will ever know. It’s costing us the ecosystems that keep us alive and the price is wisdom lost forever. The wisdom to live with other species as equals has an inner peace we can only imagine. How do I know this? Because in my ever so brief time coming back to the land I can feel it in my bones. I trust this feeling because the few landscapes left untouched echo this sentiment and that’s the only thing that feels genuine any more.
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Photo courtesy of the author.
I think we all do, Mike. Silly ape species names itself wise, thinks it can disconnect from nature, thus commits suicide, the end.