That's What I'm Talking About

In reading Philip Caputo's In The Shadows Of The Morning the other day, I came across a passage that really speaks to me, in which the author explains why he goes into the wilderness alone:

I am going hard because I think it's important to challenge yourself; the older you get, the more important it is, lest thou find thyself one day gray-haired and fat, driving a Winnebago with a bumper sticker that says WE'RE SPENDING OUR GRANDCHILDREN'S INHERITANCE! I am going alone because I wish to follow my own agenda, not a guide's; and because I don't want to deal with the needs, wishes, and complaints of a companion or companions. I am seeking more than an escape from the toe jam of contemporary American civilization. I seek to touch the mystery, and it's hard to touch the mystery when there are other people around. The mystery of the wild, which is the mystery of creation. Wilderness somehow engenders in me the feeling and state of mind that I am supposed to have in church but seldom, if ever, do. Joy. Fulfillment. Happiness. Ah, what it happiness? you ask. I can't top the definition I recently came across from Willa Cather: "to be dissolved into something complete and great." The natural world is whole and sufficient unto itself; it doesn't need us or want us. Doesn't care about us or know about us. It is stunningly indifferent, and yet, to immerse yourself in its completeness, if you can manage that surrender, is to grasp happiness.

To which I can only add "Hell Yes!" Anyone who's ever seen the sun come up over the Canyon Country of Utah, or gotten lost while trekking across the Alaskan Bush, or felt the pulse quicken after being awoken by an unidentified noise just outside the tent while camping alone in Grizzly country knows the wonder and terror of touching the infinite. I think that's what Caputo is talking about. It's why some of us keep wandering back into the mountains, usually alone, for reasons that we can't really explain. Once you've felt what it is to "dissolve into something complete and great", only to have to come back to the everyday world of civilization, it's something that will always be with you, and something to which you will always long to return. It's why I love the wild places of the American West so much. The day may come when I will leave my mountain kingdom, when life will pull me in different directions. But I will always have these mountains, and part of me will always be here.