Thumb Butte Free Write (Edited) 09/11/2014

"What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?" ~Henry David Thoreau

How is it that, when I come to a place, the purpose being to reflect and relax my mind, instead, the exact opposite happens? The wheels spin a mile a minute, and my brain burns rubber. Words such as authentic inquiry, quantitative vs qualitative, literary reviews, academic discourse…and again…literary reviews…are on constant replay in my noggin. How am I supposed to observe my surroundings, while sitting as still as possible…for two hours? It seems virtually impossible.

I’m convinced I don’t have the time to sit in this peaceful location I’ve found, but I know it will be good for me; it’s exactly what I need. I used to do this all the time, so why is it so difficult now? Graduate school has begun to consume my life. I’m essentially studying the therapeutic aspects of nature, yet it seems I never leave the house, continuously glued to my computer. Does anyone not see the irony in this? 

Photo courtesy of a Google Search

I’m supposed to open myself up to observation within the nonhuman world. Mother Nature that is. I’m normally quite good at this. Observation in the woods. Maybe it’s from growing up on a dairy farm and having 200 acres at my beck and call? Or maybe it’s from going hunting with my dad as a little girl and following him around like his miniature shadow? I’d march behind him, slipping my tiny feet into the size eleven post holes he'd create in the snow, shaking with the effort it took to be still when prey was in sight. Hunting with dad was how I learned to walk “silently” in the woods, feet turned slightly to the side, taking wide, slow steps, waddling like a bowlegged cowboy. 

Walking sideways, compared to stepping with toes pointed forward, apparently reduces the amount of branches snapping under foot, therefore decreasing the chances of giving away your location to your intended prey. While taking deliberate steps, you had to breathe slowly and quietly through your mouth. If you couldn’t do this, hunting privileges with dad were revoked and you were left at home. Dad was a master at stalking dinner, and masters cannot be disturbed.

I keep coming back to this article I read the night before. Beauty and the Brain, written by Laura Sewall. It was about mindfulness, attention, observation, and technology. The “plasticity” of our brain, as they called it. In layman’s terms, it is the brain’s ability to adapt and conform to observational triggers of things we see, storing the image away as something we will recognize later. This helps create our senses of observation and attention. The ability to focus is linked to our ability to observe. The more we focus, the more we see. Our brain is stretched and molded, hence the word plasticity, to recognize and remember the things we see. This happens at a rapid rate for adolescents, whereas for adults, it's more to the speed of molasses, but thankfully, it still happens.

The contemporary, modern world has taken full advantage of this plasticity with their focus on product advertisement, bill boards, and TV commercials. Filling our world with glittering images, so children create visual attachments to images they see all the time, therefore they want things all the time. Welcome to the world of materialism. We are all guilty of it. The internet and technology appears to be deadening our senses, especially the power of observation. By staring at a flat screen for hours and hours, our brain is absorbing tons of information and images, yet retaining little. It’s like flash cards. This in turn is affecting our natural connection with the natural world. 

As I walked from my car to the trail head, I realized how true this was. An image of my computer screen seemed to be permanently burned into my frontal lobe because that was all I’d been staring at for the past week. I was oblivious to the ponderosa pines towering over me, the granite beneath my feet, and the heat of the sun on my shoulders. All I could focus on was if I can afford to purchase Adobe Pro, so I can highlight and write digital notes in the PDF articles I have to read for my classes. I prefer paper copies so I can write where and how I need to. I feel I learn and retain information better this way. But technology has now invaded my study regime, and in order to succeed, I have to adapt and allow it to enter into my world. Did I mention I was trying to study about how to bring us back to nature? Again, the irony? Welcome to the digital age.

It wasn’t until I heard the water flowing in the creek that my senses kicked in. I heard that first trickle and it was like a kick to the gut. My head lifted, my eyes widened, my skin prickled from the warmth of the sun, and my nose hairs twitched as I smelled the sweet welcoming scent of the woods. Earth, grass, bark, water, and air all mixed together. It is an elixir to get drunk off. Heaven in a bottle. My shoulders relaxed, my lips twitched with a smile and without realizing it, my feet made a bee-line for the stream bed.

I now sit on a small rock outcropping right at the stream edge, writing and listening. I asked myself to let go of everything; to just open myself to my surroundings. It was as if I had to empty my body of all the corrosive material eating away at the very marrow of my soul, and fill it with the healing goodness of Mother Nature. It’s amazing how much water matters to me. I am in a land locked desert, but I still managed to make my way to a source of water. 

I don’t know if it’s the sound, the feel, or the smell, but it soothes me like little can. I want to feel it all around me. I want to be back in my sea kayak sitting in the ocean, stationary, letting the water take me where it will. This allows me to feel one with something that I can’t really be one with. Am I drawn to water because we are primarily 98% water? Because I grew up land locked? It’s different, so it attracts me?

I prefer cold water to warm water. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s challenging? When I swam in the warm waters of the China Sea in Hong Kong, it was soothing like silk against my skin, but it didn’t sooth and cradle me like the Pacific in Alaska. The Pacific steals my breath, making my skin pins and needles, but it provides a plethora of diversity that never ceases to amaze me. The coldness and harshness of that ocean humbles me. 

So what is it about water? Is it because it’s constantly in flow and that is what I strive for? To be going somewhere, anywhere, as long as I am going? Is it because, like the tides, I seep into things slowly, cautiously, and finally, furiously; investing myself wholly and completely to something? Is it because, like the water in a rapid, as I meet obstacles, I create ripples, determined and continuously seeking to find a way around? 

We are persistent, water and I.