Silent hiking
NATURE AS MY GUIDE
Celu Hamer
In the early morning hours, I hear the birds begin to sing. Their songs welcome the day before the yellow glow of the sun peaks over the eastern hill. I lay in my bed unable to sleep and finally, rolling over, I find the floor and kneel before my alter. Sometimes I sit there watching the flame of a small candle burning, allowing my thoughts to rise and fall like waves on the ocean. Sometimes I think of nothing at all, but just listen to my breath. Many mornings I pray for guidance from the great Mother, taking her light in to the dark spaces of my being. I seek the meaning of my existence from the void of the universe that lies within my belly, quieting the chaos in my head. I want to blend with all life and be the transparent Qi Gong Master, but I feel a fledgling, just a small bird in a nest dreaming that someday I might fly. Waking to a new dawn where meaning is found in the unfolding of the day, the world seems broken. Neighbors rush to desk jobs, children and teachers to desks. Connection with nature is lost. Connection is in the dark, quiet forests of pine and redwood, in the rolling hills of oak and sage, in the laughing streams that flow out to meet the ocean, and along the edge of long beaches where sand is kissed by rolling surf. In these places a voice speaks; this is the mantra of nature.
Nature is alive. Living sky and living hills expand and contract. Witnessing nature brings connection, connection brings peace, and peace brings healing. Nature is the only truth that remains in a world increasingly covered by pavement and plastic. Conformity and false importance of the human construct falls away when I am in these places. Cities and towns with hard oiled surfaces, and hard oiled ground meant for the movement of cars, cover the beauty and healing of the earth. My bones ache from walking on hard sidewalks. My knees are swollen from crossing the hard streets. My head hurts from the ceaseless noise of the crawling traffic, the screaming sirens of emergency vehicles, the piercing of car alarms that call to self importance, and the growling leaf blowers that are blowing away the topsoil. Fellow understanding and compassion is shadowed by angry hurried drivers who hardly wait for me to cross the street as I take my walk to the store.
No one wants to walk anymore as a mode of transportation. The car has become a convenience that people think they cannot move without, even though cars are destroying our health and the health of all species. This car dependency is not just an American trend. British children walk 50 miles less per year then they walked ten years ago; 20% of these kids are considered overweight (Reilly et. al., 1999). Statistics for this phenomenon in America must be far worse. Why do we choose to do this? How can we be healthy if our environment is covered in oil? We are being lied to by the media to believe that our cars and petroleum based gadgets provide us with freedom and escape, yet traffic is piling up. We are being told by the ten oíclock news, that our children are not safe from predators out on the streets, although the truth is that car accidents pose a much greater threat to the lives of children. The car culture does not seem to take into consideration that our children are getting sick because we are making our environment sick. Billions of dollars are being spent to find cures for cancer, obesity, asthma, stress, etc., but we are forgetting about the pollution factor for which most of us participate. I am in disbelief when I see a March of Dimes flyer, seeking to raise funds to fight cancer by promoting a contest for a new Toyota Truck, in the store window on the same day I hear on the news that a huge oil tanker is crashed at the mouth of the Columbia River. Why are people in such denial about their personal participation in this environmental disaster? I am at a loss to explain the insanity of the car-based culture. I am stressed out by driving. I just want to walk on the grass and not on the sidewalk. I desire to feel the earth beneath my feet.
To keep from going mad, I seek the safety of the hills where the earth is soft and the noise of man made machines fade into the sounds of the flowing brook, the singing wind, the rustling of leaves. My walking takes me high up into the hills where the hum of traffic becomes a white noise that no longer shatters my nerves. Following the deer trail off the beaten path of bicyclists and joggers, songs of birds are singing the praises of life. Beneath the hum of distant traffic I can hear the hum of the earth, barely audible but ever present. She speaks with animal voices and the movement of small creatures rustling under leaves. Her sweetness is heard in the singing of flowers, her sadness can be felt in the crying and moaning of the trees. When human construct falls away, I can hear the earth sing out. The earth is where I find my healing from the stress of the daily grind of life; of waiting in coffee lines, of shopping lines, of toll both lines, of the narrow restricted lines of human existence.
While walking in silence along a beach, I notice that the white noise of human machines gives way to the pink noise of ocean waves rolling on the shore. Wind and waves blend gently with the cries of gulls, warming my heart. I sink into the sand and connect with the earth, the tension in my body melts. I feel the earth holding me in her lap. I close my eyes and still take in this beauty through my ears. A Google search on ìNature Sounds for Relaxationî finds 298,000 possible matches so I know that I am not the only one seeking the healing that nature offers. At the end of the day, I watch the sunset. Looking out over the roofs, covered with people enjoying this same amazing art, I sense that I am not alone. A deep sigh escapes us when we witness the colors of a sunset or walk slowly along a beach. What makes these moments so healing?
There is something we cannot explain about how we are affected by nature, but we need nature in our lives. Even the images of nature can break the hard grind of existing behind the wheels of our cars and the square confinement of our cubicles. Twenty years of research, by Robert Ulrich of University A&M Texas, has shown that viewing nature reduces stress, is a powerful antidepressant, and significantly improves recovery rates for hospital patients (Larkin, M., 2000). More and more of this scenery is being replaced by strip malls, housing developments, and car sales mega-lots. The constant hum of machines, the loud bursts of horns and unwanted music all work against our experiencing the peace and quiet of nature. Unnatural sounds are adversely affecting our health. Exposure to high intensity noise can cause heart rates in guinea pigs to soar from 224.5 bpm to 278.6 bpm, causing the release of norepinephrine into the blood stream (Muchnick, et. al., 1998).
We are not unlike lab animals, trapped in our car-cages, being exposed to high intensity sounds that we cannot control; even the non-driver must endure the relentless noise of petroleum technology. Our reaction is to seek nature on our days off, but we need not participate as destructive weekend warriors by driving our pollution machines into nature for a glimpse of what is not yet covered with petroleum. We are ignoring the nature available to us everyday by believing that nature is somewhere else, and by participating in overdevelopment. Nature does not have to be a distant destination accessible only by the vacationing rich. Nature can be accessed through enjoying our gardens, bringing plants inside our homes, or even visualizing the images of the nature we hold in our thoughts
