Fear and Backpacking

Most backpackers are a little unsettled now and again while camping in the wilderness - particularly if camping alone, as the deep shadows engulf a woodland at dusk, or as a powerful storm moves in to close around the peaks above camp.

I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing. A little fear in the presence of the immensity and mystery of wilderness, of the unknown, gets us closer to an understanding how precious and short this life is.

The thing is that all the comfort we surround ourselves can lead to such a controlled existence that we lose sight off the fact that this life is steeped in mystery - why we are here, what the future brings for us.

What is so positive about backpacking is that it simples down life for us. Instead of driving around in our boxes on wheels, perhaps staring into tubes of electrons for much of our day, we are out on a mountain trail, exposed to the elements of sun or rain or wind, and dealing with it. We are setting up a hidden camp where we can lie and listen to the quiet of a mountain wilderness, hear the nightbirds sing and the breezes sound in the forest canopy above our tent.

All this is a healthy influence in our lives, and can cause us to become closer to the kind of person that is inspired by wildness and simplicity, by the plants and animals, forest trees and rocky peaks in mountain wilderness, and craves those days that are spent in such places.

And what comes out of this is a dedication and passion for trying to make a difference in this world while we are here, for preserving this wild places we enjoy so much, in an attitude of gratitude try to share the blessings we have discovered.

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"I think this sense of the presence of creation is a basic mood of man. But we live now in a city. It's all stone and rock, manufactured by human hands. It's a different kind of world to grow up in when you're out in the forest with the little chipmunks and the great owls. All these things are around you as presence's, representing forces and powers and magical possibilities of life that are not yours and yet are all part of life, and that opens it out to you. Then you find it echoing in yourself, because you are nature. When a Sioux Indian would take the calumet, the pipe, he would hold it up stem to the sky so that the sun could take the first puff. And then he'd address the four directions always. In that frame of mind, when you're addressing yourself to the horizon, to the world that you're in, then you're in your place in the world. It's a different way to live."

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