A Lesson About People, A Lesson About Wilderness

(A previous assignment from English class.  A lesson about people.  A lesson about wilderness.  And a lesson of how the two intertwine.)

            Trees rustle and torment you with a haunting whisper as you walk alone into the black hole of wooded shadows. Screeeech. What was that? Panicked you can’t help but to lose control of your previously steady breath that quickly becomes short and frantic. Squawwwwk. You see bright yellow eyes lit by the midnight moon that watch you with a gleaming, evil smile. Thudding frantically you can hear your heart against your chest. Your knees wobble and lock with the shudder of fear. Knock. Knock. Knock. Goose-bumps appear on your skin in an instant, almost showing an attempted effort of protection against the unknown. In the brush you sense a broad shouldered creature with razor teeth and bubbling, oozing slobber preparing to pounce and claim you his dinner. Hoo-hoo. Hoo-hoo. You gasp. But quickly slap your shaking hand over your mouth afraid to give away your whereabouts. A black bird flies overhead creating a shadow in the glowing moon. You try to find safety. You try to find your little corner of ‘known.’ Maybe try going back the way you came. But where did you come from? Looking around you feel the gravity of open, wooded space, a horrifying feeling. Wasn’t your safe corner over there? Next to the watching yellow eyes? Or didn’t you walk by that gruesome creature? The one prepared to eat you? Knock. Screeeech. Hoo-hoo.             

            

            No. You are helpless.

                        Surrounded.

                                    Alone…

                                                Or are you?

With the evolution of mankind one can understand how the underlying aura of fear has crept into man’s imagination. Before we became ‘civilized,’ our ancestors lived and breathed in the Wilderness. The Wilderness was our home, our food and most often our spirit. Our culture revolved around the Wilderness and we took pride in our job to harmonize with it. But when the gatherers and hunters became shepherds and farmers, we lost our harmony. Strong, wood fences guarded our ‘known corner’ containing our food, our spirit and our homes. After few generations living this way our civilization had forgotten the idea of Wilderness. It became the unknown, the wasteland where evil tip-toed and monsters lurked. Though mankind often tested and pondered the possibilities of what was truly lying behind the wood fence of their ‘known corner.’

            In medieval times St. Francis of Assisi, a Christian, challenged the idea of Wilderness being horrid and evil. He instead embraced the wilderness with the belief that every living creature had souls, equal to that of a man. He respected them with equality, something unheard of in the Christian church. They quickly reminded him that God gave man the dominance over the rest of nature and he was shamed into silence.

            Petrarch, a Renaissance man, also followed the Christian faith. Forgetful of his religion’s values, Petrarch was swept away by the beauty and “delight” he had found in the wilderness. After summiting a mountain peak with his brother he opened his personal copy of “Saint Augustine’s Confessions.” Through review, however, he recollected the idea that man should in fact not take joy in the pleasure of nature. Instead he was to look upon his joy of nature as a sin for it was believed to divert men from their proper duties.

            In China, nature was seen as a haven of which man could explore and enjoy his inner harmonies. Kuo Hsi, a master of Chinese landscapes in the eleventh-century, used art and literature to spread the importance of nature to mankind. In his literature work Essay on Landscape Painting, Kuo Hsi described the enclosed world that humans took upon themselves to live in ,“while, on the contrary, haze, mist, and the haunting spirits of the mountains are what human nature seeks, and yet can rarely find” (Nash, 21). He understood man’s basic fear of the unknown and sought to harmonize it through his philosophy of landscape paintings, his attempt to bring nature to man in the hope that one day they would experience the joy and wisdom nature offers.

            Throughout the history of Christ the Bible has been interpreted differently by millions of people. Various wars and disagreements have taken place due to the disputes of faiths and words. Rodrick Nash sees the Bible in two different lights regarding the subject of Wilderness. A “man’s paradise” consists of a ‘controlled wilderness,’ a space where man can utilize and nurture the land’s resources of food, water, a home. It's a paradise where there is no ‘unknowns,’ where all of possibility rests in the hands of man. However there is an opposite interpretation of the Bible, one that is “no man’s paradise.” A space of uncontrolled wilderness is considered sinner’s land. In man’s eye there are no ready resources and a world of ‘unknowns’ that are uncontrolled by man. If one becomes banned or lost in the Wilderness they are considered sinners and will forevermore be swept away by the evil of nature’s shadows.

            There will always be the ‘unknown’ aspects of our world.  It is impossible for mankind to know everything there is to know about life, but if we can learn how to again trust nature there will no longer be gleaming eyes, weird noises or gruesome creatures of the forest.  Instead one would witness the gleaming stars of the sky, hear the humble humming of trees and follow the paths of wolves. 

Let us try the embrace of wilderness.