|
|
A sign on the lookout road states:
A lookout may be described as both a place and a person: a lookout is an observation post; and, a lookout may also be a human being. At a lookout, a lookout makes use of instruments to measure forces of nature; scopes and binoculars magnify landscape; tools to record precipitation, temperature, wind speed and direction. Lookouts are trained to know when sap begins to flow in the trees, to recognize certain cloud formations; which clouds bring fire and which bring rain. A lookout is an elevated center, a point of view, a place to observe nature's multitude of expressions.
A lookout life requires discipline, watching for fire seven days a week, five months each year. The job requires focused observation for many hours, eyes constantly scanning a sea of trees, attentive to inattentiveness. At the same time a lookout challenges wilderness forces: nasty winds, intense lightning, grizzly bears. Observation from a lookout involves careful examination of outer landscape, the important eyes in the sky watching for fire. A lookout's role is to guard against one of our most primitive fears.
The environment has become a high priority in our social, economic, and political domains. Religions are busy developing their own ecotheology, attempting to reintegrate God into nature. Even psychology branched into ecopsychology, a new perspective about our place in the natural world. We are re-visioning earth as a huge organism, alive in the same manner we are alive
The following words are an eco-conscious journey into the heart of wilderness. Many books have been written about the psychological effects of wilderness, but mostly in an "outward bound" context, emphasizing self esteem and ego strengthening activities directed into the natural environment. Our traditional outdoor programs focus on wilderness as a place of outward doing, teaching survival skills and physical endurance activities like climbing a mountain. However people are becoming aware of applying wilderness toward inward exploration, beyond ego accomplishment activities. The real wilderness experience may entail a walk into our own inner landscape. Our environmental crisis may be nothing but an individual spiritual crisis, and people are called upon to examine the wild residing in their soul.
Alchemy is the study of soul. And every book is like an alchemical cauldron filled with words or images into which people may project their own psychic content. Words, as in the dissolution and coagulation of ideas, one line to the next. So may the following serve as a container into which individuals may project their own visions of truth in their relationship to the natural world. "Alchemy," writes Charles Ponce,
"was, and may again become, the archetypal language of the soul. It was this receptacle into which many could deposit the seeds of their peculiar imaginal visions of things to come. It is for this reason that we continually trace so many sciences -- chemistry, pharmaceutics, psychology, medicine etc. -- back to it. Alchemy was all of these things and none of these things. It was the product of soul imagining."
A man's attitude toward Nature around him and the animals in Nature is of special importance, because as we respect our created world, so also do we show respect for the real world that we cannot see.
MY CABIN AND LIVING area consists of a fifteen-foot square structure; on the roof sits a cupola, my observation post overlooking hundreds of square miles of forest. In the foggy mist the lookout building resembles a small tugboat, and indeed it feels as if I am drifting on water, on a vast sea of trees.
Seven miles away Black Rock Mountain stands like a massive fortress guarding the entrance to Devils Gap. On the peak of this ominous mountain sits an old abandoned fire lookout cabin; you can see it with the naked eye, like a nipple on a huge breast. I wonder what it was like to live on Black Rock in the late 1920's, with the howling wind and utter desolation. Perhaps the lookout man experienced many bouts of cabin fever with nowhere to run or hide; without insulation in the walls, he spent long hours in his sleeping bag -- no fooling around, survival and the raw elements. Hopefully he refrained from sleep walking with precipices on all sides of his lookout site.
Seventy years ago, very few people hiked up to visit the Black Rock lookout man. Before the days of helicopters it took a two-day horse ride from the Ghost ranger station to service the lookout with supplies. The horse packers may have been his only visitors for a month; he had to depend on himself, time as his worst enemy, time his best friend. Today, lookout forestry cabins are better equipped, physical survival comforts improved over the years with propane heaters and electric generators. Yet, the job still requires the same psychological challenges experienced by the old Black Rock lookout many years ago -- long periods of solo wilderness isolation.
"What makes you do this job for so long?" hikers ask.
People wonder what makes a human sit on top of a mountain for months on end; something must be wrong perhaps, as one lady from New York city suggested: "What are you running away from?" (She wrote two books advocating the drug ritalin for attention deficit disorders). "I know you must be on a spiritual gig or something," she added, "but still, you must be hiding from something."
A lookout person is an ideal target for people's projections, a receptacle into which people may project their imaginations and fears. Projections onto lookouts vary: from a wise man to a crazy hermit, an environmental hero to a social zero, and God knows what. Understandable, wilderness aloneness touches a live wire in most humans, from romanticism to fear. A forest belongs to our legends and fairy tales, friendly spirits and dragons hiding in caves.
One fire lookout wrote in Go Tell it on The Mountain:
A lookout life involves playing a mythical role, from a hermit to a fool on a hill. However, most hikers to Mockingbird Lookout are nature enthusiasts, and living on top of a mountain carries romantic undertones. Frequently visitors ask, "How do you get a job like this?" Or people will remark: "I can't believe they pay you to do this." Most people become elated by the magnificent view, their childhood spirit enlivened by the idea of living next to the sky, eyes soothed by the depth and space of being able to look so far into the distance, nature's breadth and beauty inviting soul.
A lookout serves as an ideal place for contemplation and reflection, a calling of soul. In search of the sacred Grail, after King Arthur's round table meeting, all knights entered the forest alone to seek something precious in themselves. Legend states:
"They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the forest that he had chosen where there was no path and where it was the darkest."
A lookout life fits this spiritual theme; wilderness aloneness challenges deeper fibers of oneself. Wilderness isolation caters to introversion and reflection; forest as the alchemical prima materia, primal matter, in which fantasy and reality intertwine. Wilderness teaches in a symbolic language, and as one old timer lookout said: "Each season you learn something new about life, but it's difficult to put into words."
A psychologist, who once hiked up to the lookout, said that living alone at a fire lookout invites fantasies and dreams. City life entails constant stimuli bombardment; a car horn warning of a fatal accident, sirens and alarms, both visual and audio pollution constantly pulling on consciousness. While alone in a wilderness setting, without having to drive a car, shopping, and frequent social contact -- psychic energy becomes internalized and contained. Therefore this energy normally spent outwardly, expresses itself inwardly through the realm of imagination. This might explain why people dream more at a lookout: energy usually spent in civilized life flows inward through dreams, imagiatio of the night. Lookout people claim more vivid dreams in their wilderness ambience; images of the night leave a greater imprint effecting their mood the next day. In undisturbed silence, dream images tend to linger longer. Perhaps this might explain why great religious teachers entered the wilderness to solicit Divine forces. A wilderness setting appears to catalyze the myth making part of our beings.
THICK FOG RESTRICTS visibility; generator shed barely visible from ten yards away. In these conditions a feeling of containment sets in, cabin restricted, gray light casting a mood like in an old black and white Bergman movie. Amazing how the spirit yearns for the sun and cerulean sky, a need for color. What is left but patience as a virtue, everything changes, nothing stays the same. Truth is like an elastic, a rubber band that can stretch only so far, especially on top of a mountain; the forest turns into a mirror, and honesty to oneself becomes an important survival tool. Problems may also exist in an inner landscape; fire as in surfacing emotions capable of elating a human to drink nectar with the gods; or, fire as in hot passions that may lead to suicide. Long periods in a wilderness setting may stir fantasies to run wild.
Jack Carter, head lookout man, told many bizarre stories about fire watchers at their wilderness outposts. One young man did not answer his radio call sign, and a ranger in a helicopter flew out to the lookout site to investigate his silence. The ranger found him laying in a fetal position in a pit near his cabin. Apparently, he believed a major war erupted, and that he was the last person alive on the earth. Reality and delusion?
The forest may be unkind. This may be explained psychologically: isolation without social feedback tends to twist a individual's reality, especially with lookouts in northern forests in isolated circumstances; in some cases a forty minute helicopter ride from a remote native settlement. I spent three years up north and a helicopter came by once a month to drop off my supplies. A ranger stayed to chitchat over coffee for fifteen minutes, to check if the lookout man is still reasonably sane -- and that was it! Perhaps in early spring an Indian trapper might surprise me with a visit, but basically I'm on my own for the next five months. You learn to chop wood with extra care, and psychologically speaking, without honesty to oneself may be asking for another kind of danger. Thus it states in the Forestry Lookout Manual: "Lookouts are not a place to escape from your problems." Indeed problems may intensify in a wilderness setting; mountains frequently built out of molehills, and thoughts may sway into speculation without foundations of reality.
"You are a different person in the forest," friends told me over the years. This is nothing new, because after twenty years of lookout life I know nature to be massaging my consciousness. But I also noticed nature's influence on friends who hike up to visit me; they become captivated by the spell of the natural surroundings elevated on top of the world. It seems people experience psychological alteration when sitting next to the clouds; camp fire conversations expose soul content normally hidden. A wilderness ambience supports a sense of humanism in people, letting go of civilized tensions.
In a wilderness setting you eventually realize wilderness to be the host and you the guest, and eventually you have to face nature, or It will come to you - a fundamental principle. At the same time, "nature pardons no mistakes," wrote Emerson, "Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay." The wilderness needs to be approached with protocol, and with time she may expose her rhythmic dance in the churning and blending of weather, successive growth of wild flowers, phases of the moon, cycles of the rising and setting sun.
A few fire lookouts try to resist Gaia, Mother Earth, and the fire season might turn into a long uncomfortable summer. Although the life-style of a fire lookout resonates with romanticism, nature may not always be kind. Fire lookouts may end up crawling on all psychological fours, counting the days on their calendars. Wilderness isolation stirs the unconscious and honesty becomes an essential survival tool. Nature turns into a mirror and truth can stretch only so far.
Nature may challenge with her wild animals. A dangerous meeting with a mountain lion or grizzly bear touches the depth of soul, a consciousness-jolting experience. While alteration of consciousness may also happen witnessing a marvelous sunset, clouds illumined with a spectacular splash of purple and pink. In nature, not only are do we come upon fleeting moments of tremendous joy and elation, but also images belonging to a nightmare.
Tom, up on Limestone Lookout, knows about nightmares. A living hell manifested into a reality when in the middle of the night a grizzly bear tried to enter his lookout cabin. The bear managed to pry the cabin window open, and young Tom awakened to a wild beast threatening his life. He had a rifle, however, and shot the bear dead.
Fire lookouts should have a gun, rangers advise. A lady lookout also complained about a bear ripping the screen off her cabin window in the middle of the night. But in her case, the bear never attempted to enter her cabin. She did not have a gun.
One morning she noticed the bear sunbathing underneath her bedroom window. She surprised the beast by quietly opening the window, and in a calm gentle voice she told the bear not to bother her in the night. The bear gave her a startled look and then jumped up and ran away. "The bear never returned," the lookout lady said, "I don't need a gun out here; all you have to do is talk politely to them."
One fire lookout shot three bears in three seasons; he said he needed to defend himself. But how much of the beast existed in the mythological wild of himself and not in the forest? Fantasy and delusion may be found behind every tree. A forest landscape with animals invites fears; forest as a cauldron into which people may let their imaginations loose. Mythological associations between gods and trees are frequent. A forested landscape belongs to our legends and folk tales, a place of friendly spirits and wanton dark forces crawling about.
Don Penner, on Keystone Lookout, claimed a dark entity visited him all summer, a shadowy force with its own movements, unlike an animal. It all started one day when a bear unexpectedly poked its head through the kitchen window. As an instinctual response to defend himself, Don threw a bowl of hot soup into the bear's face, and the animal ran back into the forest.
Later in the fire season, after the bear incident, Don said the dark entity appeared. He became adamant that it was not the bear, but something with "alien-like" movements floating through the trees like a patch of dark gray mist. He said this "entity" kept visiting him all summer, and each time it visited, he prostrated begging not to be harmed. His fear nearly drove him mad, "I'm never going back to lookouts again," he said, "I nearly lost my mind."
For years I wondered about Don's experience with the dark entity. Was this entity outside of himself or inside? Was he projecting his own beast into nature, or was nature reflecting her beastly side into him? But it does not matter - - for him the experience was real, psychic content that had a profound influence on his consciousness. It seems that Don Penner, by seeing the dark entity, threatens our conventional reality principle like a crazy person insisting on something that is not there. However, such was the animism view of Native societies; there was much more to hear and see... fire speaks, the wind sings, owl whispers, and the bear talks in many ways.
The animals in a wilderness setting take on a psychic life as Gary Snyder writes:
LAST SUMMER I FELL in love with the cliff swallows; they built a nest underneath the cupola stairs and daily from my kitchen window I watched their nesting activities. One day five chicks appeared in the nest, and a few weeks later they all flew away. I missed their chirping and lively presence, thinking they had left for good. But then one day, the family of seven birds returned, swooping down on the cabin near their old nest as if in celebration. In these moments I felt joy, fleeting moments of happiness that came in its own time, without consciously pursuing.
Daily I talk with birds like the whiskey jacks, imitating their various calls. Whiskey jacks are in essence a lesson on sound, a harmonious link between nature and music. After many years I learned to distinguish the subtleties of their voice; a whiskey jack can sound like a cat, or whistle like a song bird.
You come to It and It will come to you. Nature appears eager for relationship at a lookout. Set and setting, place and mental milieu. Nature effects consciousness on such high elevations, exposed to lightning and cold temperatures. For certain the wind influences my moods; and many days in fog, lost in clouds, invites serious introversion. At times I become ecstatic by the quality of light of a sunset, or the emotions that stir me while witnessing a violent thunderstorm. Peter Hackette, a physician and researcher on altitude physiological changes, claims:
Altitude is known to produce euphoria in human beings. Mountain climbers report fantasies of wanting to jump off a peak thinking they can fly, a feeling of immense power overwhelms them. Such grandiose notions are symptomatic of ego inflation, according to analytical psychology, like Icarus in Greek myth wanting to fly with his waxed wings. Altitude alters our psychological state.
Set and setting. Apparently eighty-five percent of American astronauts experienced some form of consciousness alteration during their space flights, an experience that led them to view life from a different perspective. A radical change in ambience allowed a peek beyond a conventional point of view. In the same way when people from a city enter a wilderness setting, the environment alone begins to alter consciousness. A change in setting from our normal cemented city maze alters our perceptions of the world and ourselves.
In her book The Power of Place, Winifred Gallagher describes how the Industrial Revolution restricted people's affinity with nature. People began to spend more time indoors, away from the natural world, into heated and illumined places regardless of day or night. At this point in history the human focus turned to economy instead of biology. Stephan Kapan, an environmental scientist, spent twenty years studying how we're effected in nature. He claims that modern pressures of city life have become too much for many people to absorb. He writes: "Nature could play a terribly important, although as yet almost unrecognized, role in reducing stress."
How place effects our mental well-being was known by the ancient Chinese. Modern day architects and designers have taken interest in Fung Shui or "wind and water" interpretation of the surroundings. Feng Shui considers the psychology of place and how we can live more harmoniously in an environment. The place in which we choose to live may be salubrious or a detriment to the quality of our lives. In Feng Shui the level of chi in an environment is most important, chi as in life force. An individual may become depressed when living in a house with windows facing north; not enough chi entering the rooms. In 1986 the Ottawa Charter, developed by the World Health Organization, became the first official document to link health to the natural environment.
Behavioral scientists recognize the importance of light in our living space. SAD, seasonal adjustment disorder, may be the result of absence of light entering our pineal gland, a condition that may lead to depression; light entering our brain may keep us aligned with the solar system. Relationship also exists between depression and humidity; for some people, the chinook winds of southern Alberta trigger migraine headaches. All which goes to say that environmental variables effect our mental and physical well being. An individual may be free of allergies by moving to an arid place like Arizona. Some localities are known to heal people while others make them sick.
Most people entertain a geographical sentiment about what part of the world they prefer to live. What scientists found is that every individual reacts differently, whether to extreme hot and cold temperatures, altitude, and humidity. Nevertheless nature has a similar effect on all human beings; an office with a window effects work efficiency and well being. Horticulture therapy is becoming well know, indicative of our roots to the natural world.
While hiking in the desert a group of scientists noticed cacti plants appear to turn bright orange; they experienced a form of hallucination, beyond normal levels of perception. This experience led them to investigate why some places in the world may induce visions and hallucinations. Certain mountains and rivers are sacred in religions, and primitive man has long known special geographical locations to have a healing effect. In Carlos Castenada's recordings of a Mexican sorcerer, a certain place may serve as an individual's power spot. Shamanic initiation also entails finding the right place to transcend into an invisible world.
Environmental scientists suspect that visions and hallucinations in a particular location may be due to the earth's electromagnetic field. Humans and other living things are also electromagnetic in nature and thus linked to the earth's magnetic core. Some animal cycles are timed by the strength of geomagnetic field as the earth rotates. Scientists speculate that religious experiences in some locations may be the result of an anomaly of electromagnetic surge in that geographical area. The planet's electromagnetic nature may be irregular in certain spots of the world, the play of electricity. A vision may be induced by our physiological-psychological reaction to an unexpected burst of electromagnetic activity.
Perhaps science and native spirituality have found a shared reality about understanding natural forces, a middle connecting space. Electromagnetic activity belongs to the invisible, beyond our normal perceptions. Shamanic practice involves cultivation of heightened levels of perceptions, a way of seeing into the hidden forces of the natural world. By studying nature, a medicine man knows about the interconnected structure of nature; his perceptions trained to detect anomalies. A shaman understood the visible signs of an invisible order.
A GEOGRAPICAL LOCATION may be affected by its name. Mockingbird Lookout sits in the Ghost forest district, alluding to the mysterious and unknown. Names of local mountains such as Black Rock, Apparition, Phantom Crag, add to the dark and unknowing feeling tone to the area. John Snow, chief of the Stoney natives, wrote a book called These Mountains Are Our Sacred Places. Natives formed an affinity with nature, and they believed that certain landscapes contain spiritual forces. The mountains and hills around Mockingbird Lookout once belonged to the Stoney people, and the landscape belonged to their religiosity, their place of vision quest. Cross-culturally, mountains have always been a pilgrimage destination point in various religions. Buddhists view nature and mountains to be a way toward enlightenment. The Celtic Druids also considered certain trees and groves as natural cathedrals. Spirits may be accessed through rivers, waterfalls or springs; places in nature through which the underworld may be contacted for healing purposes.
Mount Kailas, in the Himalayas, is considered to be the cosmic sacred mountain of Buddhists, like Mountain Meru for the Hindus and Mount Sinai for Jews. Mount Olympus in Greek myth, represent a transcending point of departure from the material to spiritual world. A fire lookout on top of a mountain caters to such religious-mythical images. Mountains to native cultures served as the axis mundi, world axis, a center to peek into another reality. Shamans looked upon the world axis as a place to see the real world, a crack in the cosmic egg.
On top of a mountain, heaven and earth intimately meet. Above, the sky is like a huge glass dome always communicating through a variety of cloud formations, pictographs from the gods. A sky always in flux with a spectrum of color; blackness of night to pink in the dawn light; many days of gray-white brush strokes of clouds in a canvas of deep blue. On a mountain the wind always makes its presence known, blowing from the four corners of the world, east-west- north-south. Natives believed in two more directions, up and down. A similar tenet found in alchemy emphasizing what is below and what is above.
One of the most rewarding experiences as a fire lookout is in the affinity formed with the churning weather. Weather observations serve as a meditative link to the sky. Twice daily I collect weather data and relay the information into forestry headquarters, data entering computer systems world-wide. This task requires understanding various cloud formations: cumulonimbus, lenticular, altocumulus castellanus -- cloud indicators signaling the approach of weather systems. Thus my consciousness is always focused on the sky, sensitive to wind direction shifts or sudden humidity changes. Weather governs our lives; farmers know, like the ranger fire fighting staff know, about forces beyond their control. The weather gods are alive and well. A forestry administrator must curse trying to set a budget for the next fire season; forest fires depend on weather conditions, beyond the controlling whims of man. Weather remains unpredictable from one year to the next. Weather as a lesson on humility.
Weather affects my point of view; on some hot afternoons a feeling of lethargy descends, air seems to thicken, inertia, like an animal resting in the shade. Or the mood before a thunderstorm; buzzing insects and singing birds in expectation and suspense. A steady rain with its curtain of fog carries a reflective mood, an introverted movement into oneself. Weather gives continuity to life, weather as flux and transition, a pulsating rhythmic movement seasonally aligned with the successive growth of wild flowers, leaves sprouting and dying in the fall, changing verdant hue of the grass, sound of geese in spring and fall. Observation of weather attunes the mind into the general flow of nature -- how everything changes, nothing stays the same, but everything returns, around and around. In this rhythm, nature operates in its own mechanism of time, its own hidden workings. William Wordsworth wrote about this rhythm:
H.D. Thoreau writes, "It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful and gives birth to imagination." Wilderness experiences cultivate dreams and visions, and it has been said: a person without a dream is a person without a soul. The early alchemists projected their fantasies into the chemical synthesis of matter, fantasies originating from the depth of their soul; or in our modern terms: fantasy originating from their unconscious. Nature may be viewed as a huge alchemical cauldron inviting projections from hidden parts of ourselves, a receptacle into which soul may find expression.
As Thoreau recognized and ecopsychology verifies: wilderness alters consciousness in a way that is beneficial to our well being. A splashing thunderous waterfall, chattering aspen leaves, a magnificent cloud in an azure sky, a lightning flash in the night; nature invites fantasies from soul. And for a fire lookout, many days of fire-watching is a form of alchemical dream making: forested sea as primal soup; earth, water, fire and air blending, coagulation and dissolution, like the churning weather; sky as a huge vessel inviting dreams or visions. As looking for fire entails observation of alchemical relationship of dream-like events; fire and the wind are pals. Fire and water fall in love as in the orgasmic burst of lightning and whipping rain; moisture from heaven tames fiery passions. A voice of a powerful god may surface in rumbling thunder; lightning awakens the earth after a long winter sleep. Imagination may be kindled in the dusk light, as the day feeds on the night, and night on the day, a rhythm, a dance, like a snake chasing its own tail.
Every season I build a sweat lodge using willow sticks and a large canvas tarp. A sweat lodge experience forms an affinity with nature and the raw elements of life. "The closer you get to real matter," wrote Jack Kerouac, "rock, air, fire and wood, the more spiritual the world is." Water, according to Lao Tze and Plato, is the glue that binds fire, rock, and air. These primary elements are combined inside a sweat lodge. Water, as aqua divina, poured on hot rocks (fire), forms steam; hot vaporized mist, amalgamated prima materia ingested into the lungs with each breath.
A sweat lodge serves as a womb of transformation and rebirth, an alchemical furnace to purify body and spirit. After cooking in these primal ingredients, upon reaching the right kindling temperature, the body is then exposed into the freshness of crisp alpine air; wind caressing the naked skin, exposed directly to the rays of sun, bare feet touching the grass. "You didn't come into this world," Alan Watts writes, "You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean." After the sweat lodge ritual, the body feels a deep sense of relaxation as in a trance, a consciousness-altering process well known in native spirituality.
When a crew of Native firefighters came up the lookout and noticed my sweat lodge, one of them asked, "How do you know about such Indian things?"
"A friend told me about it," I said with humility, "It makes me feel good." Stoney people remain secretive about their religiosity; the white man devastated their cultural reality by taking away their landscape. To isolate the early Indians on small reservations was the ultimate blow to their sacred connection to the land -- the white man devastated their dreams.
ON LOW FIRE HAZARD days I take long hikes into the forest darkness. I hike three miles down to the Waiparous Creek usually under the light of a gibbous or full moon. A solo walk in the night along the rippling waters of a creek offers a magical array of sound and spectacle. It's in the darkness of the night when wilderness reverberates with heightened levels of mystery and unknowing. Sparkling stars in a great black dome catalyzes a sense of awe, kindling my imagination. Twenty years ago, I would be too fearful to enter the forest darkness; after all, walking alone in the night stretches parameters of human security, especially during summer months when bears sleep during the heat of the day and wander in cooler temperatures of the night. Where does sensibility begin and end? However, like climbing a mountain or rafting down a river, wilderness hikes into the night are a form of challenging nature. A challenge that usually has a reward, both physical and psychological.
In the night the forest begins to speak a different language, and my instincts tell me to stay quiet and walk softly, just listening, each sound registering deeply: from rustling trees, to a gurgling creek in the distance. Shadows come alive in the silvery rays of the moon, the forest exposes her cloak of the night normally invisible during the day. I walk like a deer, my senses fully awakened, each moment attentive to inattentiveness.
The forest speaks and tells many tales. Natives honored the spirits of nature by holding discourse, talking and listening to them. Children know that nature talks with their instinctual animism responses, something personal and very real. Ecopsychologists claim that from childhood we form a deep emotional bonding with nature, and the goal of therapy is to guide adults back to recover their original childhood animistic experiences.
Nature calls for relationship and it's not always fun and games. Long wilderness trips sometimes jolt individuals, shattering their hubris and egotistical defenses, deeply effected by some incident during their wilderness sojourn. Nature may reflect her nigredo side, the black stage in alchemy, a blackening of consciousness; dark layers of soul surfacing as the shadowy side of personality. In nature the gods are alive and well, especially the Pan god with his exquisite flute playing. Pan as a duplex, dark and light, as all of nature. Pan may invite you to a campfire festivity with food and music, but then later turn into the devil.
Painful and dangerous wilderness experiences often transform people who survive them. Nature may challenge on all levels, physical, emotional and mental. Some people report exhilaration after surviving, a feeling of at one-ment with the universe, a surge of personal power that changes their lives forever. Most survivors learn that the wilderness is the host, and you the guest; thus wilderness needs to be approached with protocol and humility. Perhaps the only undisputed axiom in philosophy is that: "Nature does nothing in vain." Wilderness has little regard for human peacock pride and importance. Wilderness experiences calls for removal of our civilized persona, beyond ego identification. Activities in nature, according to Gary Snyder, "...are to make intimate contact with the real world, real self. ' Sacred' refers to that which helps take us out of our little selves into the whole mountains-and-rivers mandala universe."
Wilderness educators claim that on wilderness trips people go through "midcourse blues," a span of time when they become depressed and bored, having lost their initial romantic sentiment about nature. This may be when nature calls for people to drop their persona, their civilized masks, and face what separates the truth and lie in themselves; investigation into both night and day half of their lives. 'What is above, is what is below,' is a central alchemical process. At some point in wilderness activity, people's dark side may erupt, expression of the shadowy dark side of human nature. Wilderness experiences may force an individual to integrate dark contents of soul, prima materia, right down below in their own vessels of transformation. Examination of both what is above, and what is below, the night and day side of personality. Then, perhaps interesting things begin to happen in nature, a movement toward whitening of mind as in silvering of the full moon -- awakening, a feeling of being at home in the natural world. "Oh man, remember," it states in the Upanishads, "through wilderness we remember, and are brought home again."