At Home in Nature by Rob Wood

Author:Rob Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RMB | Rocky Mountain Books
Published: 2017-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

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DEEP WILDERNESS

“What is it about Canadian wilderness that is so important for us to defend?”

SINCE EARLY CHILDHOOD I HAVE been intuitively responsive to the ability of wild places to affect my feelings and state of mind. In the old country, the landscape was often beautiful because it had been “cultivated” for thousands of years by people (and sheep) who were more in harmony with nature, but its power was diluted and tamed in comparison to the pristine Canadian wilderness. The crags where we climbed were more powerful than the surrounding areas because they had not been worked over so much. By comparison, our home island on the BC coast, though relatively wild and beautiful, has been modified by logging and lacks the potency of the pristine landscape of the more remote, rugged and inaccessible parts of the BC Coast Range.

My first conscious experience of deep, uncompromised wilderness was in 1971, when the famous British climber, Doug Scott, and I met in a Cairngorm pub and devised a plan to climb clean granite rock walls somewhere far away from societal distractions. We wanted to experience the pure spirit of exploration and self-reliance free from the bureaucracy, commercialism and crowding of popular places like Yosemite and Banff National Parks. We found that isolation in abundance in the mountains on Baffin Island in the eastern Canadian Arctic, where magnificent granite peaks, glaciers and treeless tundra bathe in the crystalline clarity of magic arctic light. After spending six weeks in this pristine landscape with complete absence of societal noise and clutter, we became increasingly conscious not just of the pretty view but also of a subtle ambient presence, a vibration that interacted and resonated with our feelings and emotions. Beauty became love.

We learned that things went better when we paid attention to these feelings and tuned into the surroundings and each other; when we listened and read the natural signs with our body/minds open and free. Then meaningful coincidences (synchronicities) and intuitive hunches happened more frequently, assisting our judgment and critical decisions, especially those concerning navigation, timing, weather and avalanches. Conversely, things went badly when we were not paying complete attention to our surroundings and each other; when our minds and spirits were distracted and out of focus. Deep wilderness experience taught us that our well-being, safety and ability to survive depended on conscious awareness of our internal and external environs.

In Strathcona Park, on Vancouver Island, I discovered a unique and particularly powerful version of the hidden connectivity of wilderness ambience. In the alpine areas between the steep, forested valleys below and the barren tundra of the high peaks and glaciers above, an extensive web of interconnected ridges provided relatively accessible, multi-day hiking expeditions through exquisite pristine meadows with exotic flowers and shrubs and sparkling streams and small lakes.

A dramatic example of the way this subtle energy of the pristine landscape can inspire love and conscious awareness and can move and shake us was demonstrated by the political battle to save this magical wonderland from the ravages of heavy metal mining in the late 1980s.

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