The forest is one of the places where I feel most peaceful, most at home, and most safe (to the illogical surprise of many).
I just stepped into a forest on the border of a mid-sized city. It is a relatively small area that seems to have been meticulously molded into rows of trees. I’m used to entering forests around which the boundary is a more gradual transition. So entering this one hit me with a wave of sensorial contrast.
The din of the city immediately is muffled to a distant whisper. The filtered light creates an entire new set of colors, as my eyes adjust like stepping into a dark room. The temperature drops immediately, possibly 10°. Although there are probably many people nearby, the feeling of distance between myself and others is multiplied, by the decreased transmission of sound and sight, from the muffling and obfuscation of the tree trunks and branches as well as the leaves and pine needle-strewn textured surface of the forest floor. I feel stealthy, as if wearing a cloak of partial invisibility, seen only from short distances. I feel my body automatically and instinctively relax. I can feel my mind settle, allowing me to identify and notice each thought with presence, rather than be carried away by a mental cyclone.
I think one of the best meditation practices is to find a place in a forest away from the sounds of everyday life (cars, talking, airplanes, beeps and rings).
I sit or stand still, so that not even the ground crunching below my feet is audible, and hear what’s left.
I’m often awed by the symphony of wind, birds, scurrying forest creatures, the occasional falling pine needle or branch, insect buzz, stream trickle…and that’s just audio channel. I alternate between eyes open and eyes closed, and there is a theater of slowly flowing shadows along the ground, leaves playing catch with the light, and a fascinating ecosystem that is different from the one even 1 km away in any direction.
And then there are the smells – fresh, sweet, musty – the dance of life and death playing out as fresh new leaves and flower buds grow out of nutrients from decomposing plant matter. There is the distinct richness of forest air, oxygen fresh off the assembly line, purified by a vast natural air filter. And then there’s the interplay of all of these external sensory stimuli with my body’s responses and reactions to them. The more I open the aperture of my awareness to all of these sensations, the more my body response to them, that feels like opening dozens of locks with perfectly fitting keys, allowing heavy chains of stress, vigilance, and caution to fall away. Forest attributes are as important as the characteristics that it does not have: motors, propellers, engines, horns, concrete, plastic, and human vocal cords and psyches.
Having said that…not all forests are equally magical. And this brings me back to my current walk in Bottle Lake Forest park. I will preface this list of complaints by saying that I am certainly spoiled, having had the opportunity to hike most of the Pacific Crest Trail (which also varies widely with regards to spectacularness): It’s a rather small forest that can be walked across in a couple of hours easily. It’s bordering a major city, so it has a large number of hikers, bikers, runners, and equestrians. There seems to be a significant amount of dead trees and other plants. I believe I can feel, somehow, the degree of “life” in a forest. A lot of the area within the forest has been clear-cut, leaving only chest level saplings. Along with the people is plenty of litter, as well as a “highly trafficked” feel of the area, everything from ultra packed trail dirt to the ever so slight apprehension that a fellow human is around the corner to inquisitively notice you doing something strange like dictating a blog entry into your phone. Dog barks and the occasional poop have been sighted. There is literally a landfill in the middle of this forest (“exclusion zone”). There are a lot of rules to follow (there are separate tracks for every type of transportation). Of course this is a lot better than no rules when you have lots of people trying to enjoy a small space, but there is no comparison to the vast expanse of wilderness that you’ll find away farther away from cities.
These are all preferences. No doubt some people would prefer this type of forest to the wilderness type that I’m used to, the kind in which you are sometimes a multi-day walk away from civilization and you might encounter the occasional bear or cougar. And even I am on the fence about the hassle involved in making camp, shelter, and food, in the remote wilderness, compared to my plans for this evening (take the bus back home, cook in a kitchen, and sleep in my own bed). So there is some degree of subjectivity in the way that we judge our “context” to be favorable or unfavorable, our days to be “good days” or “bad days”, and the tiny chunks of our days to be good, or bad, accordingly. We all have our ideas of a good day, a good place, a good time. We can be small town people or big-city people, cat people or dog people, nature lovers or citydwellers.
And then there’s the stuff that virtually all of us tend to like. People are willing to pay millions of dollars for homes near oceans, lakes, beautiful mountains, and forests. We like safe neighborhoods, new or nice old things that are kept up and function well. We like places that are accessible to clean air, water, food, and kind and competent people.
A few years ago, I had some of the greatest experiences of my life out in nature, by myself, and this became my reference point for the “bliss” end of the bliss-agony continuum. But alas, we can never cross the exact same river twice, and I found that long-distance hikes in the wilderness actually entailed a fair amount of “bad” experiences. Towards the top of the list, I would include loneliness, crowds (in popular spots) physical pain/discomfort, and other less than ideal hiking/camping situations.
I experienced this in an obvious way the past two summers hiking in Washington. In 2018 I hiked about 80 miles on a popular PCT section, only to find at the beginning that the vistas were clouded by smoke from numerous wildfires, which was both unpleasant and unhealthy. It was during an intense heat wave, and the combination of the smoke, heat, and dry air was a lot to deal with trudging up and down many hundreds of meters. The major boon of hiking – cleansing the lungs with fresh mountain air – was replaced by what felt like chain-smoking-hiking. It was also quite heavily trafficked by people, during the height of the summer, which made having a sense of solitude and even often finding a good camping spot difficult. There was a 1.5 day window in the middle when the smoke cleared, due to some rain, but I ended up cutting the trip short by a couple of days because of the smoke.
This year, I had the opposite experience – no smoke, but tons of fog and rain. The ground was often covered with snow, which was difficult and sometimes dangerous because of post-holing (falling) into craggy uneven rocks. I spent the entire seven day trip wearing all packed clothing to stay warm. Normally I like to stop for long periods to rest and enjoy scenic viewpoints, but since so many of them were blocked partially or entirely by fog, I tended to just keep going. Surprisingly, again, there were numerous people hiking, due to a combination of the Fourth of July weekend, mid-section access points via paved roads, and the beginning of the stream of southbound PCT hikers who started at the Canadian border. This made finding good campsites difficult in evenings, which incentivized starting the day early in order to hike a reasonable amount by 6pm, about the average hiker site-claiming hour. The rain came often enough that plants were heavily loaded with drops that would run down my rain kilt onto my shoes, making it so that my feet never dried out the entire trip. I would take my drenched socks off at night, revealing feet that looked like they had been underwater for three days. By the morning, just as they were almost finished un-waterlogging, on went wet socks and wet shoes, which would promptly get re-drenched by plants carrying the morning dew or overnight rain.
I’m complaining about the downsides of these two trips in order to contrast the beginning of this article, about how magical I find forests to be. I simultaneously keep sight of the gratitude that I had for the amazing aspects of these last two trips. Fog and rain can make for some amazing misty views, when they are visible, creating unprecedented clarity and crispness in the air. And while I didn’t get to swim in Mica Lake, the crown jewel of PCT section K, I did get to see it glowing a beautiful icy surreal blue. The fact that I can still see vast expanses of trees with not a single one that appears to be struggling, is inseparable from 80%-90% rainy days per year. And while having so much water on the ground kept my feet wet, it also kept my pack lighter as I almost never needed to carry any.
There is something about unpleasantness and discomfort in nature that feels a lot less unpleasant later when I’m reflecting back on it. When I pull up my photos from both of those trips, I am amazed at the beauty I saw, and the memories I now have. They were difficult trips, but difficult and beneficial are quite orthogonal properties.
Epiphany is a strong word, but it hit me at the end of my last week long hike in Washington that life is a lot like a thru hike (a thru hike, if you don’t know, is basically a very very long hike). Maybe it was the combination of how many hikers I saw (I’d estimate about one every 10 minutes on average), combined with the BUS at the end of my section, that had something like a 50-person capacity to take hikers to the resort town of Stehekin, where we were marooned at a bakery before reaching the general store and restaurant. This shuttle ran four times per day, carrying dozens of hikers each trip. Rangers gave us tent campsites for free, as many days as we wanted to spend in the town vortex, consuming food and Wi-Fi.
I had the strange experience of knowing that my short week-long hike was over, and talking to dozens of thru-hikers who had just started at the Canadian border. I had hiked about the same distance as they had during the past week, about 110 miles, but their perspective was so different. I think some did not even spend the night, but picked up their resupply boxes and got back on the trail.
Not only had I already hiked the next 200 miles they were about to hike (in 2018 and this year), I had also hiked about 1500 miles of Oregon and California, and experienced all of the major milestones it traversed – Mt Hood, Sisters Wilderness, Crater Lake, the Russian Wilderness, Mount Shasta, Burney falls, Desolation wilderness, Sonora Pass, Yosemite, all the epic passes around Kings Canyon and Inyo National Park, Kennedy Meadows…. I had so many memories behind me, and they had so many in front of them. It made me wonder if that’s how very elderly people feel at the end of their lives, looking at all the fresh and doe-eyed youngsters just getting started in the Big Hike we all do.
I knew what they were going to see, and I knew some of what they were going to feel when they saw it, and there was a bittersweet mix of happiness for them and sadness for myself. But I was also grateful that I’d be getting back to climate-controlled living and clothes washers. I also know, from my own trail experience and from talking to plenty of other hikers, that these Sobos (southbounders) just getting started on their 3 to 6 month-long treks, that all of them (some more than others) would experience some combination of disappointments, loneliness, sadness, physical discomforts, and frustrations like the ones I mentioned.
It’s amazing how we humans can take something as heavenly as backpacking in a safe and pristine outdoor magical kingdom, and resist, control, and protest so much of it. But so many of us know that beautiful nature is a place where our resistance is likely to be low and our hearts and minds are likely to open. This way we can practice disappointments and “misfortune” in smaller, manageable pieces, with the splendid environment keeping us joyful like training wheels keep a bike upright. Instead of heartbreak we get a tear in our jacket. Instead of financial strain we have muscle strain. Instead of oppressive bosses and deadlines we have oppressive mosquitos and flies and have to walk a few extra miles while thirsty. We go to bed with layers of dried sweat on our skin, but who cares when you can see heaven swirling above you while listening to a live performance of nature’s finest evening music? Nature, combined with days of movement and a hiatus on excessive thought (media) consumption, tends to put us into a state of mind and heart that is a solidly peaceful default. The setbacks and unpleasant surprises are usually minor and quickly forgettable. What if we could live life that way?
But the dichotomy between “life” and nature hiking (or insert your ideal retreat) is not real. I realized that even many PCT hikers are in towns for 5%-10% of their hike, where they charge phones, check email, do laundry, eat at restaurants, and pick up mail. We interact with each other and other trail users every day, making friends, exchanging information, and sharing observations. Modern living also has movement, and nature (e.g. parks, animals, plants). Depending on where we live, and how we live, we can have quite a lot of overlap between these worlds. So maybe our ratio of in-town time inverts to 90% to 95%. But now at least it is a quantitative, rather than a qualitative, difference between the “good life” and the stressful life. We get the training wheels less, but we can still use them sometimes. Since my first solo overnight backpacking trip in 2014, my free time in modern life has trended more and more towards being outside, moving, meditating — essentially using any nature around as a portal to the peaceful state of consciousness I know from thru-hiking. Sometimes this works very well and other times it is a lot harder. But ever since I thought, “life is a long thru hike”, I’ve sought to blur and eliminate the imaginary line between hiking retreat and the grind. I have only begun this lofty goal which, if ever completed, would be nothing short of finding joy just about everywhere.
Walking into this forest, even with it’s above shortcomings, my heart opens and my mind clears. I arrive keyed-up and scatterbrained, and after walking 3 and ½ hours, I am centered, which lingers through the evening as long as I don’t screw it up by seeking out mental activity and interactions (online or in person) that I generally know will stress me out. Those will come soon enough on their own with the tasks that survival demands. The more time I can delay fret and worry, and keep it peaceful and simple, recharged by even a mini-nature retreat, the better I get at finding my way back to center, back to peace, when life gets complicated.