Wisdom from Nature

After hiking thousands of miles and spending hundreds of nights in the wilderness, the modern human is forced to confront a few things. The priorities and perspectives that work for most “civilized” folks aren’t very useful in the wilderness. What’s considered important in “regular life” doesn’t always hold up when your food bag is nearly empty and you’re still two days away from the nearest form of civilization. Naturally we begin to see the world differently, we begin to pick up on the wisdom that can only be found in nature. These are just a few of the lessons I’ve learned from spending time in nature. 

For a majority of human history we have been living in small tribes as hunter gatherers. The environment was less predictable than it is today. No one knew when the next drought would come or the next predator would hunt us down. For most of our existence, the human species has been trying to reduce variability. With the rise of modern civilization we have largely succeeded. Variability in the average person’s life has decreased considerably. Most of our days are predictable and safe. Today the risk is too much stability, not too much variability. This is dangerous too, but for opposite reasons. Too much stability leads to stagnation. When we are no longer challenged by variability we stay the same. We stop growing and life becomes stagnant, then we tend to atrophy.

Flexibility is key on adventures. It’s good to start out with plans, but when situations change, so should our plans. If we are too rigid in our planning then we will walk right past great opportunities which seldom announce their presence in advance; they simply appear without warning. We have to recognize them before it’s too late to get the most out of our adventures.