The Unclad Soul

I was on the walking trail the other morning and happened to notice the white fluffy clouds in a clear blue sky above me. It’s hard to walk and look straight up at the same time. At least it is for me. I had to stop for a minute and take it all in. The smallness in society today, the petty wrangling over politics, the little daily insults from the President and politicians on both sides, the ridiculous media madness, the silly antics of drivers on the freeway furious because someone didn’t let them into their lane, the rude actions of store clerks and customers, seem all-consuming these days. And then, there is the sky. So vast. So mysterious. What’s up there besides airplanes and clouds? What might happen if we were to often roam the dimensions of nature? To get out of our narrow confines and seek wisdom in the sky, the ocean, the blooming flowers, and healthy plants, in the broad wide existence of our expansive environment. We might grow in maturity, in insight,...

Beyond the expanding urban cities, and past the secluded rural towns, awaits the wilderness. That is where I want to go; what naturalist and environmental philosopher John Muir called, “the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed” places. They are Thoreau’s, Walden Pond. They are conservationist Ansel Adams,’ Kings Canyon where the giant General Grant tree grows, or the Sierra Nevada, where groves of the massive sequoia rise into the sky, the tallest trees in the world. Those great places also exist in poet Mary Oliver’s nature settings, who said of flowers, “There is nothing in the world that can be said against them.” Wouldn’t it be nice for a change, to be there? A place where nothing could be said against anyone. I want to follow an overgrown trail that leads into a deep green forest and hear and feel the sounds of the earth. I’m looking for wildness, for untouched beauty, for scenes of nature’s glory abandoned and left alone in the quiet. I seek the mountain, the riv...