Why Outside?

Some people may wonder, many already know, why being outside is so wonderful. It is something that can’t simply be explained, but can only be understood through experience. I think this is true for most things in life. You can always be told how it feels to see your children born, but there is absolutely no possible way to understand that feeling until you experience it for yourself. The true meaning of love at first sight cannot be better known than to see that gruesome sight of a little hairy head protruding from…well you know what I am talking about. Enjoying the wilderness, what little of it there is left to enjoy, can truly only be understood when you get out of your house, out of your car, and onto your own two feet. When you see the gory, bloody, disgusting truth of the fact that nature doesn’t give a damn about you, means you neither harm nor good, but only is, do you begin to realize the beauty inherent in it. Through evolutionary processes only, have we as humans developed the cognitive ability to contemplate not only our own ultimate fate, but the fate of all things…they will all end eventually…for eternity. With this realization we are able to quantify and qualify the goodness and perfectness of the natural world and understand the miniscule role we each as individuals play in it. Through knowing how little time we truly have here, if we take the time to pay attention, we can more fully appreciate our world and its inhabitants, all of them. Too often do people, myself included, get lost in their own struggle for survival that they forget to look beyond themselves to see that everything and everyone around them are also struggling for survival. We are all in this together, humans, plants, animals, nature…think about it for awhile. By visiting the wilderness, and I don’t mean driving through a park, I mean getting OUT into and within the wilderness, we are better able to appreciate the glory around us. I am beginning to ramble on about the same thing here, but I do think it is a valid point. The point I am making is that I really like getting outside. I like walking on a trail and seeing the tracks of animals and wondering what they were doing when they left those tracks. I like even better to walk up upon those animals and see them doing what they do when nobody is watching. I like learning about, and then tasting, the edible plants that grow all around us. Some of the best tasting in Texas include mesquite beans and prickly pear fruit, for those of you who are interested. I like watching birds of prey soar above us, watching us and waiting for us to meet our fate. I like watching and listening to the little birds I can’t identify flit in and out of scrub brush. I like the power felt when I pull a paddle through water knowing what swims just beyond the bow of the canoe. If you look closely you can see the bluegill, carp, catfish, bass, and gar avoiding the oncoming vessel. I like even better the power I feel being exerted through a fishing rod as I reel in another fish. Even better still is the smell and sound of a freshly filleted white bass being fried over an open fire of oak in a cast-iron skillet on a cold January evening. While reading these things that I like, you will see my point. Those that have experienced the same things I have will have a feeling of reverence and longing to be there again. The poor souls who haven’t experienced the same things I have will see only words without meaning. When I read other’s tales of great adventure that I have yet to experience, I sometimes see words without meaning too, but more often than not, I am able to feel that longing to be where they have been. The places I crave to experience include hiking Copper Canyon in Mexico, floating through southern Utah on the Green River, fly-fishing in the mountains of southwest Montana, grouse hunting in the Sangre de Cristo, laying on a beach on the Baja peninsula at night with my wife next to me as we watch for shooting stars and contemplate our future together, all of these things and more. I realize I will never do all the things I want to, I realize I will never be able to fully satisfy my lust for nature, but I am damn well going to die trying.

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you -- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."
— Edward Abbey