Lessons from the Wild #3

This perfectly sums up what I feel after just returning from a week hiking in Yosemite National Park on the John Muir Trail -

"You didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here."  - Alan Watts

Only one week, and I feel reborn, refreshed.  And, I feel a deep gratitude for those that fought the good fight, and still are, to protect and preserve our wild spaces.  This last was hit home strongly by a German friend who joined me on this trip.  This is a guy I'd met trekking in Nepal 7 years prior.  He's fortunate to be a tour guide and has spent a lot of time in majestic mountain landscapes all around the world.  After a brief trip here in 2009, he was eager to come back for more, and set his sights on a 4-week hike of the legendary John Muir Trail.  I joined him for the first few days and was inspired at seeing the California Sierras through his eyes.  One observation he made really struck me - that in the Alps, or Himalayas, or in most other mountain ranges, you generally begin in a town or village, hike up a mountain, then descend back to another town.  Not only that, but, particularly in the Alps, on many of the ridges you'll see gondolas, and lights, and roads snaking through all the valleys.  But here, in the California Sierras, you can look as far as the eye can see, and walk for a couple days (or more) in any direction, and still be in wilderness.  WOW!

And it's true.  As we sat in the evenings, watching the light fade from the sky and be replaced by countless stars, I realized that I couldn't even detect a dim glow of some distant town anywhere on the horizon.  Yes, this is rare I thought, and to the great credit of the founder's of our country's national park system.  And countless others who have fought for their continuing preservation, against great odds. David vs. Goliath type battles.

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.”   - Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water

There are many organizations doing amazing work to protect and preserve these vitally important places for all to enjoy - wild animals included.  Start by checking these out and consider what you can do to help - sign a petition, donate, volunteer, spread the word.

National Parks Conservation Association
Friends of the Earth
The Wilderness Society
Save Our State Parks
The Sierra Club
The Nature Conservancy 
Campaign for America's Wilderness
California Wilderness Coalition
Earthjustice
Save the Redwoods League

I also highly recommend the Ken Burns documentary - The National Parks: America's Best Idea - that not only tells the amazing story of our parks foundings, but is beautiful nature porn too.  Most importantly, get out into the Wild!

“It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.”   - Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail