Into the Woods

One of my favorite Henry David Thoreau quotes is his explanation of going to Walden Pond to live. He wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

What he learned was that what passed for advanced civilization; viz. towns, government and business; was really quite psychologically, emotionally and spiritually poor. He found that those whom the white people called “savages” were actually more comfortable, happy and, in many ways richer than the whites who looked down on them. Those WASPs (i) whom he observed in the community near Walden lived with tremendous debt, never found and/or took time to live, and saw nature as a contradiction to what they perceived as progress. Progress, he learned, was an excuse to destroy nature.

The reason that this quote has so much meaning to me is our similar experience. Seven years ago Pamela and I ‘went into the woods’. We became volunteers at Glacier National Park in far northwestern Montana. While we both have a great love for nature our action wasn’t as deliberate as Henry’s. That is to say, we weren’t expecting the epiphany that awaited us. We were ready and anxious to learn all that the wilderness had to teach us. We just didn’t expect the Walden Pond type of enlightenment.

That simple act led us to a life on the road, exploring mountains, prairies and desert. We now live in our twenty-one foot Roadtrek we call Mr. Spock. One of the first things we learned was that modern society is extremely limiting, confining and isolating.

I bet you find that strange. I also bet that you’ve never known anything other than what we call ‘sticks-n-bricks’ (permanent buildings) and accept the idea that everyone has to have a “permanent address”. That’s just a good way to be controlled, but that’s another story.

My intent is to focus upon the positive aspects of the Thoreau quote, but I do need to lay the ground work by explaining how modern society is limiting, confining and isolating.

Society limits you by defining who you are, where you live, where you will work, what you will believe, what you will wear and many other controls that limit your ability to experience life and experience the phenomenal vastness of your potential. To be so limited is an artificial barrier created for the sole purpose of controlling you. Social systems must control you to survive. If you give in, you will not experience the fullness of life nor will you ever know your full potential. You will be content with a stereotypical concept of success.

When was the last time you stood on top of a mountain you have just climbed? Not driving up and walking out to a vista. You climbed the whole freakin’ way. You look down and feel the rush of life. Yes, that’s life you’re feeling. That’s what it feels like to not be controlled and limited. You realize ‘I just did that!’ You climbed a mountain. You made friends with a bear. Well, maybe making friends is too much but you encountered a bear and the two of you went you own way in peace. You climbed rugged trails, encountered animals you’ve never met, and gawked at magnificent panoramic vistas from high promontories. You walked along narrow ledges that made your head spin, forded rushing mountain streams, and climbed over magnificent boulders. You experienced life fully.

Why would you want to allow yourself to be limited? It’s not because you want to be limited. It is because you’ve been taught to accept the limits. I spent an entire career dressing, acting, and talking like I was expected. When Pamela suggested that we go to Montana I asked ‘for how long?’ When she told me all summer, my reaction was ‘can I be gone that long?’ Of course I could but I was still living within societal limits. Like those observed by Henry David Thoreau societal limits keep you pigeon-holed and confines your thought and behavior.

The problem with the type of confinement we experience in society is that those who control the society want you to see the confinement as security. I would suspect that’s how it found its way into Orwell’s book “1984”. (ii) We have been brainwashed to see confinement as security, slavery as freedom.

“Oh, I have security here,” says the person about their life in the same town in which they grew up, in a house with a big mortgage and a job that, if they were honest, could go away at any time. But they’ve been taught that. They didn’t experience it as truth. ‘Oh,’ the controllers of society say, ‘you’ve got a house and a job. You have security.’ Yeah. Right. If you believe that I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn that I’ll sell you cheap.

Now, I do not have anything against having a house in the same town for years. That’s really nice if you know that’s what you really want. In fact, if you’ve actually given it serious thought, tried or considered alternatives, and decided that’s for you, I think it is absolutely great. But when you do it because you’ve been told and expected to do it that way, then it is confinement. Everyone has to make a living, but hundreds of thousands of people have figured out that they don’t have to have a house with a mortgage or pay an exorbitant rent for an apartment and a job in a factory, store or office. Just like the villagers near Waldon Pond, most people are confined.

Two new friends of ours are just starting their nomadic life. They are in their thirties. One runs a business with her phone. It doesn’t matter where they are. The other is a bartender. She can walk into almost any town, anywhere and get a job. We have friends that work as camp-hosts. Others do things like work the sugar beet harvest. All of these people are leading a free, unconfined life, but we are looked upon as odd or worse. For over 93% of our existence, humans have lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Where did we go wrong? (Actually I have a theory on that, but you need to follow my research on hunter-gatherers for that.)

Few of us are probably meant to be nomads, but all of us were meant to be free. Actually the environment couldn’t handle it if all humans decided to become nomads. Human over-population is far too great. (iii) Nevertheless, we can all refuse to be tethered and enslaved by the Social Systems which want to rule the world.

FOOTNOTES:

(i) WASP =df ‘white anglo-saxon protestant’, until recently a relatively accurate descriptor of the dominant person in the United States.

(ii) Orwell, George. (1949). 1984. New York City. Penguin.

(iii) If all humans were to disperse from cities and live as nomads there would be 317 people per square mile of every inhabitable area of the Earth! You can look it up or calculate it yourself, but the bottom line is that there are way too many humans on this planet.