Outside of my window there are a few sickly trees that appear to be growing straight out of the concrete. The tops of their leafs have been painted white, the careless result of men who had been spraying the rooftop earlier this week. From these transformed trees comes a little chipmunk that I notice nearly everyday. He (or she) darts out of the unhealthy shrubbery and races along the broken pavement. I've seen him scurry down the side of the brick building, his body completely vertical. He seems to retain all the qualities of a wild animal, he's exceptionally quick and agile, and yet at times he looks almost confused and unsure about his surroundings. He balances himself on a rusted railing, teetering between the natural world and the modern one.
Between the ages of eight and twelve, my life's ambition was to get lost in the wilderness and survive on my own cunning skill. In elementary school I read books like
My Side of the Mountain,
Where the Red Fern Grows, and
Scrub Dog of Alaska, books about kids who left home and went on adventures. I wanted a plane to crash over Mt. Hood, leaving me miraculously as its soul survivor. I wanted to get lost in the woods. I wanted to be completely detached from society and from the modern world. I wanted to experience freedom.
When I was a kid my dad used to take me camping during the summers. We would travel far enough up the mountain so that we were completely isolated from any roads or trails-- from any sign of humanity. Even as a kid I could tell that the air was fresher up there. I found trees to climb on and rivers to swim in. In the forests, the grounds were blanketed with copper-colored pine needles. The rivers and streams that trickled down from the mountaintop were cold and crisp-- the result of freshly-melted snow.
On this mountain is where I had my first transcendental experience. I was ten years old and I was standing at the top of a slope. The earth fell into a valley where deep-green pines touched blue sky. The warmth of the sunlight kissed the back of my neck. Hailing from the suburbs, I had never seen the sky so expansive, so majestic. It enveloped the wilderness and myself, making me just another element of nature. All that I could see in any direction were signs of purity, indications of the magic of experiencing nature. If all of this was a part of the world that I lived in, then I knew that life could be beautiful.
When I was fourteen my plans changed. I decided that I didn't want to live in the U.S., so instead of running away to Mt. Hood I was going to escape to some little remote island around Central or South America. My objectives were the same though: I would build my own house- this time a mega-deluxe tree house that would rival that of the Swiss Family Robinson- and I would utilize the natural resources in a way that was simple and sustainable. I imagined it would have been sort of like
The Mosquito Coast, minus the Harrison Ford craziness.
Last spring I went stargazing at the reservoir with four friends. Atish wanted to be able to lie on his back, look up, and see only the stars in the sky. We soon discovered that this was nearly an impossible wish to grant. The land was so flat that the lights from nearby houses and streets flooded the hillside and prevented us from being able to clearly see the stars. We went onto the trail so that the surrounding trees might block out the artificial lights coming from the town. This almost worked too, except that the tops of the trees only a allowed a small, starless portion of sky to come through.
The five of us were lying on the trial, gazing up at a patch of darkness. The lights were gone, but signs of the unnatural world remained. We listened to the clock the toll and the cars drive by on a road that was less than 400 meters away from our heads.
There's this scene in
Trainspotting where Ewan McGregor and his friends go out to the Scottish countryside to seek fresh air and relaxation. They hope to escape their modern-age problems by reconnecting with nature, but they don't know how. They're all so preoccupied with their own troubled lives that the beauty of the country is overlooked and the oppritunity to find comfort and peace is missed.
This is what the whole stargazing experience was like. The lights, the clock, and the cars all seemed to remind us that our nature was a fake. We had ventured out to the reservoir because we wanted to clear our minds; instead we ended up discussing classwork, relationships, and our uncertainties about life afer college. Our social obligations had not left us. We wanted so badly to feel that we were a part of nature, because when we were kids we had all felt that we had a spiritual connectedness with natural world. We wanted to get back to where we once had been; the problem is that now we didn't know the way.
I feel like I've lost something. The connection, the outlook that I once had as a child has evaporated. I still retain my sense of adventure and I still desire to live in a way that is in accord with nature, it's just that right now reality trumphs a lot of my youthful ambitions (How can I own and operate my own movie theater if I live in a treehouse on some remote island?). I'll try to remember that Maharishi said that "Individual evolution is a set of actions, aligned with natural law, that leads to liberation and fulfillment." Alignment with nature is essential and can't be shrugged off.
Perhaps I just have to keep reminding myself of how breathtakingly incredible the natural world can be, like how on one early evening I saw the moon and the sun in the sky at the same time, one rising and the other setting. There must be a happy medium between nature and modernity. I just have to balance and endure it like the little chipmunk.
Elyse's post on Marisa's essay:
Marisa utilizes much humor in her essay, which, although I don't know her too well, seems to be indicative of her personality. I am finding more and more as I read the works of others that their personality really comes across in the writing. The thread of the chipmunk all the way through was quite nice. The descriptions were great. I could completely see the chipmunk scurrying along the side of the building. The way she described her experience of childhood connection with nature and struggling to recapture it reminded me of almost every Christmas for me after the age of 12. Yet still we keep trying. Marisa has a style of writing similar to David Sedaris. I could totally see her writing for NPR or the like one day. I liked when she proclaimed "Nature is a fake." A few of the Nature essays from this class seemed to work from this premise. Actually, not that Nature itself is a fake but rather the way our society puts it on display.
Jenny's Nature essay:
None of the four of us in my little car knew how far the field trip was going to be outside of town to Jefferson County Park. We followed our professor's car as he sped along the wooded neighborhoods on the outskirts Fairfield. "Where is he going?" I said, trying to get my old car to keep up with his nearly new one. I was getting a little nervous because the day before I had quickly volunteered to drive a car-load of students before remembering that my little '86 Lebaron convertible may not be roadworthy for a long trip after a summer full of car troubles. I decided to keep my mouth shut about the car and lucky for the Lebaron, the park was only a few miles outside of town. We pulled up and got ready to write and take photos. We discussed plans for lunch and then proceeded towards the park trails to begin our field trip. Most of us went our separate ways, but I found myself feeling the hope of sticking with a few of the other students on the trip. Most days, I would want to venture off on my own to ponder life and have some quiet time amongst the trees. But that day, I felt a need for some companionship along the trail. Thankfully for me, my friends Elyse and Theresa felt the same.
We started off along the wide trail and almost immediately found something that caught our eye- a grouping of rounded, bright red berries, nestled softly near the ground on the edge of the path. Their color was a brilliant, warm red. The artist in me kicked in and I decided to take out my journal to sketch their shape and how they gracefully dangled over long grass but so wishing that I could capture their color on the page. Just a few steps down the trail was a small scatter of brilliant white flowers. As I sketched, I noticed that inside of each large blossom were the blossoms of hundreds of tiny flowers that made up the whole. Their color was as white and bright as fresh snow. I started to think about the distinct shapes and brilliant color of the red berries mixed with the white of the flowers and how they would look together on a porcelain tea cup or small vase. I had recently become almost obsessed with creating art based around the beauty of nature and this was a perfect opportunity to capture an idea. My friends took photos, but I came to the conclusion that I would have to keep the colors stored in my mind for later artistic reference, after realizing that I had loaded a new role of black and white film into my Pentax the week before.
We pushed on. Theresa was captivated with the mysteries of the fallen trees that seemed to hang frozen over the forest floor. Elyse went further on ahead, as I watch a dried, brown leaf spin and dance in the breeze after becoming captured in the sticky hold of a spider's web. Later down the trail, Theresa and I once again met up with Elyse, who had decided to stop and come back when finding a fork in the trail ahead. Elyse and I stood amongst the trees, chatting quietly while taking in the beauty of the morning. Light shone through the trees on Theresa as she found a bench to rest on at the trail's fork. As I continued to sketch a large, furry vine that had meandered it's way around a young oak, Elyse and I spoke about her children and about motherhood. As I stood their, I imagined and hoped that someday it would be me speaking of my children with her. Theresa was still rested on the bench. I looked up from my sketch book and conversation and noticed that Theresa had her eyes closed, smiling ever so slightly in deep meditation. And although I myself did not feel the need to meditate at that moment, I was happy that she was. After sketching out a whole page and having a lively conversation with Elyse, Theresa suddenly stood up from the bench. We joined up together again as a group, the three of us and decided to take the sunny, grassy fork in the trail. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Theresa let out a short gasp. There was a large doe who, by the look on her face, had not sensed our presence and was just as surprised to see us as we were to see her. She quickly crossed over the trail in front of us and stopped several feet into the woods. She put her back to us and began to shake her tail, clean herself and flirt with us, turning her head from one side and then the other, as if to say, "well, are you going to take my picture?". The show lasted for nearly 3 or 4 minutes before the doe slowly made her way back into the woods, looking back at us a few times to make sure that we hadn't in fact laid out any edibles that might have interested her. I felt strongly that Theresa in her meditation, had somehow attracted the doe and brought her close to us. This was maybe another opportunity for Elyse, Theresa and me to see the power of the collective consciousness at work and how much we are truly all a part of nature. The three of us continued down the grassy path, speaking about our encounter with the doe, about family, motherhood and the beauty of the plant and animal life that surrounded us. I thought to myself how blessed I was to come upon this sweet place, somewhere I could now go for solitude, artistic inspiration and reflection and even within biking distance from Fairfield. After coming home, I thought about my day and knew that at sometime I would return to Jefferson County Park and maybe this time make sure I'd loaded color film into my old Pentax.
That evening, I took a nice, hot bath after feeling as though I was coming down with a cold. I went to bed early. And that night I had a vivid dream. In the dream, many people surrounded me, needing my help. I stood, with my back up against a large tree. My hair and head suddenly became part of the tree and I was able to gain knowledge from the tree and it's roots to help the people around me. After waking, I realized that my consciousness too, had connected with woods and that they were welcoming me to return and meditate their, which I will do before winter moves in.Elyse's blog on Jenny's essay:
I really enjoyed this essay for a few reasons. First, knowing Jenny as I do, I really felt her energy and personality come across on the page. Jenny is a very meticulous, orderly woman and her essay followed a linear path which is so like her. If the essayist can reveal themselves in this way, then they have truly done their job as a writer. I also enjoyed her essay because it was a different spin on what I wrote in mine. Traveling together, at least some of the way, we saw the same berries and white flowers and deer but had differing experiences. This is what makes life so interesting. Who we are as individuals literally creates our circumstances and experiences. I am sure if you asked my brother to retell his childhood experience, he would tell a completely different story than I would. In fact, I know this to be true. Jenny saw a deer, who after seeing us through the trees, stopped for a while and "slowly made her way back into the woods." Seeing this same deer, I swear it took off at a much a brisker speed, being startled by something we were not aware of.
