The Art of Wild

Trip Starkey
Aug 24, 2017 · 5 min read

“Wilderness is an antidote to the war within ourselves.” — Terry Tempest Williams, The Hour of Land

Somewhere out beyond where mountains stretch toward endless sky, and oceans barrel toward tranquil shores, there is a spiritual thread that has been tangled in us for some time. The vitality of our collective imagination has been ignored and discarded as if it is no longer welcome, and we have too long accepted our circumstances as willing bystanders. In a day and age where social activism and originality seem to be praised above all else, we have run ourselves ragged chasing after seemingly invisible ideals. All the while, the cacophony of opinions, whether online or in the flesh, has begun to suffocate our progress.

Oftentimes, in these moments, a change in perspective is necessary in order to further the path to understanding. Whether it is a stark encounter with the unknown, a simple altering of view, or even a totally radical geographical shift, these happenings can ultimately be the most essential in one’s development. The need for confrontation with the mysterious, a venture toward the unnamable, in order to press beyond our own stagnation, is imperative to keeping us whole. And yet, it isn’t simply an engagement of perspective that inspires growth, but a physical connection with a place or landscape that inevitably motivates change.

In the terrain beyond our urban and suburban epicenters lays the cornerstone of the American Spirit. As a country built on the ideals of individuality and freedom, our frontier mentality seems to have become anything but. Our lands — which stretch from sea to sea, traversing steep mountain passes and endless, open prairies — have become a vestige to a forgotten ethos. This neglect of human spirit is in direct correlation with our neglect for sacred, wild places. We have literally cut ourselves at the root, disavowed the hidden corners of our world, and burrowed ourselves into cement and steel facades. We have suffocated our dreams, let our imaginations rot, and accepted that which is fed to us through illuminated screens as our ultimate truth. In our aimless wanderings, we have grown tame, forgetting what it means to seek out our own wild natures.

But to anyone who has ever dared to break the cycle and venture toward the great beyond, there is something that begins to take shape. Take a single step on the stony spine of a mountain trail, or hole up in a muted forest on a random afternoon, and an unnamable force awakens. Found in these places is a desire buried somewhere within each individual that yearns for the wild. It is an animalistic tendency to reject constraints and break free to the spiritual cores within us — a return to our own internal topographies. However, in order to connect with these wild aspects of our inner selves, there have to be wild places that remain. And there have to be champions of those wild places that will endlessly defend them.

In his Coda: Wilderness Letter, Wallace Stegner touches on the importance of preserving our wild landscapes, noting that out of “hidden corners and pockets under its cliffs” a sudden poetry springs out. He continues by stating that it doesn’t even matter if “only a few people every year” venture into the wild, we simply “need that wild country available” to us. What matters most in terms of our public lands is that they continue to exist. That we work to protect them to the fullest extent, not out of some strange duty to place, but because within those vast expanses and minute pockets, there lays the vital core of our being. It is the part of us we cannot afford to lose. In all of our stagnation, our truest selves are contained in those uncontrolled landscapes.

“I think in large part the brittleness we feel when fighting … for a place … comes from the almost totally dependent nature of the relationship: the relative lack of reciprocity. We receive far more nourishment from the grace of the woods, or the spirit of a place, than we are ever able to return. We can only learn to mimic the rhythms of the place we love — joining more tightly, in some small manner, in the larger weave before we extinguish ourselves…” — Rick Bass, The Book of Yaak

Lost in all the noise and destruction of modern life is the integral nature of our relationship with our wild territories. We not only rely on these places as resources of survival, but, on a more rudimentary level, we receive in nature our origins and our ultimate refuge — our true selves. The natural world is an immovable force; no matter the damage and corruption we unload on it. It existed before us, and it will outlast us all. The natural world is our guide, providing us with never-ending examples of regeneration, endurance, fortitude, and, ultimately, grace in the face of unthinkable destruction. We find our humility in nature, recognizing that the world is much larger than any individual, and each species — animate or inanimate — is equally integral to the survival of the whole.

In the vast, untamable recesses of our great lands, we inevitably find the true rhythm of life — entire systems working in unison, through endless cycles of destruction and restoration, pushing ever onward toward a balanced existence. Not only do we find equilibrium here, we also find a vital curiosity. It is in our confrontation with the vastness of wilderness that we come to engage the boundless realities of existence. Whether it is a forest cloaked in evening fog, or a great endless desert with scarred and split earth, these great frontiers of spirit are ever before us, beckoning to provide our lost souls an anchor in reality. These expanses will never fully vanish unless we allow them to vanish. However, the essence of our existence depends on our assurance that these places endure. We need the perspective that the fear and awe provide to us and our wild cores. For as Terry Tempest Williams notes in The Hour of Land, “the difference between fear and awe is a matter of our eyes adjusting.”

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Trip Starkey

Written by

One of the roughs, a kosmos

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