The wild
"The Robs" on a freezeout camping trip in 2003-ish
“A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their song never ceases. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves.”
-John Muir
It’s another cold, blustery day in Unusually Persistent Winter ’09-10.
I woke up feeling a little hemmed in and listless and I wanted something pretty to look at over my cup of tea (besides journalismjobs.com… talk about starting the morning out on the wrong foot.)
So, I picked up an old National Geographic picture book that I bought for $5, I think, at a sidewalk sale in Andersonville over the summer and promptly forgot. It’s about John Muir, one of my favorite old beard-o rambling naturalist types.
READ ON
Takin' a page from this book...
I’m completely delighted by that quote about the forest as a place of worship, with the trees as humble supplicants, bowing to the wind.
I guess I’ve always felt the most connection with a supreme being when I’m spending time outdoors. Not in some not in some kind of strange nature-pagan sense, but in the sense that a place can be utterly complete and there’s nothing that we can bring to it besides our own sense of wonder.
Here’s the song that finishes off my thought. I got Langhorne Slim’s album, “Be Set Free” a few months ago and never really listened to it until a friend was playing him recently. I put it on for the drive back from Charleston yesterday and it was a perfect snowy day co-pilot. Here’s “Back to the Wild.”
“If i could return
to when i was a child
I’d forget what i learned and go back to the wildBack to the wild”
-Langhorne Slim
