Take two hikes and call me in the morning

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. -John Muir
Communion with it (nature) restores us to a level of our own human nature at which we are still sane, free from humbug, and untouched by anxieties about the meaning and purpose of our lives. For what we call 'nature' is free from a certain kind of scheming and self-importance. -Alan Watts

I grew up in East Los Angeles, and my initial exposure to nature was the occasional vacant lot and a sporadic view of the San Gabriel Mountains when the air was clear enough to see them.
At age 14 though, I shouldered a backpack for the first time, and the door opened to a whole new world.
A friend and I had read a book about backpacking, bought the suggested equipment, and my parents dropped us off at the Mt. Whitney trailhead. One month and 220 miles later, we arrived sunburnt and skinny at Yosemite National Park.
Our first days on the John Muir Trail were (in retrospect) fairly comical. Two city kids trying to pitch a tent, start campfires, and lug a month's worth of food over the Sierra's. But we eventually grew more skillfull, and a natural rhythm began to grace our trip. And a love of the wilderness was awakened that has been with me to this day.
For the last few weeks I've been on a backpacking and camping vacation in the South West. I picked up my friend Paul at the Denver airport, and that night we were sitting by a campfire 20 miles outside of Moab.
And it dawned on me: This was my first sleep-under-the-stars-by-the-campfire-night in a year and a half! That's a record for me, and one I hope to never break again. Watching the flames do their mesmerizing dance, I was reminded of just how good it feels to be hanging out in nature.
This was a gentle trip, with our time spent doing day hikes or short backpacking jaunts. We'd laugh at how much food we had, or at the fact that we had pillows in our tents. What we found humerous was the contrast. The last hike Paul and I did together was a 70-day trek in the Alaskan wilderness, where the criteria for a successful trip was survival. Here's a journal entry from that time:
With the weight and terrain, this is the most difficult extended trek I've ever attempted. It isn't a matter of getting through a rough spot and then moving onward. It is adapting to the reality that this is virtually ALL rough spots. We're following water tributaries: first the Nation River, and now Hard Luck Creek (ominous name). There are infrequent times we can walk in the river, but it is almost always too deep, too cold, or too strong a current. Mostly we are bushwacking by the shore. No paths, of course, but we find the occassional game trail belonging to moose or bear. Generally we are fighting our way through thickets, battling for every ten feet of progress. If not dense brush, we are trudging through nasty bogs, sinking to our ankles under the weight of 120 pound packs.
So you can understand, why the sight of Paul with a baloney sandwich in one hand and a pillow in the other was enough to send me reaching for my camera.
I imagine that most of you Coolworks perusers are also lovers of nature. It's the best perk of many 'cool jobs;' this environment we are blessed to be working in. What a gift.... I have to remind myself sometimes, to stop and appreciate these surroundings. Caught up in the daily habits and obligations, it's easy to take for granted the beauty that surrounds us. But it is such a rejuventating experience simply to walk through nature and reflect on our mutual existence.
The goal of many meditations (short of ego dissolution and enlightenment) are to get to a place beyond goals. A space where the monkey-mind ceases it's chatter, and consciousness experiences a different level of reality. As a monk goes into his cell for meditation, so can a person enter the wilderness as a place to center and regain perspecitve.
I have had the good fortune to ply my (occassional) profession as a therapist in some beautiful settings. And it occurs to me that a great ally has been beside me at these times.
Common experience tells us that a solitary walk by the river or ocean, a few calm hours in the woods, restore the spirit and may produce more insight into our motives and goals than the best labors of the professional analyst. My guess would be that by the time most clients have fought their way home on the freeway, whatever good was achieved during their $100-per-fifty-minute-psychiatric-hour has been undone. -Theodore Roszak
We live in a unique time in history, when humankind has both high technological development
and wilderness areas (dangerously shrinking) on the planet simaltaneously. May this precarious balance be treated thoughfully. As Aldo Leopold said,
Man always kills the things he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map.