SOLVITUR AMBULANDO: Paean to the Joys of Hiking and Benefits of Being in Nature
"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light."
- William Wordsworth
When our heart and soul are set aright.
Imagine a world "full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper," W.B. Yeats wrote.

A world we barely see and perceive and hear - horrors! Does such blanking out result from having to be trained to see, look at, and notice? Or are we dealing with grand scale myopia and distraction on the part of techno-obsessed humans?
Key to all sensory attuning is "the art of seeing," a la John Burroughs, where "things escape us because the actors are small." Long ago in another time, Burroughs exhorted us "to look closely and steadily at nature" and take pleasure in the "minute things" about us.
Part mindfully and partly mindless, we make every effort to sharpen the senses - else how to appreciate "the daily and hourly miracle of the usually unnoticed beauty that is close at hand," wondered Joseph Wood Krutch.
City living, it is known empirically, can be a discordant experience, a jolting way of life, distracting our attention from the natural world about us; truly, such trying circumstances take a toll on the psyche and heart.
Way back when, though, John Muir knew the secret to shedding life's "carnal incrustations" built up over the citified years - psycho crud barnacled to the hull of our souls. Muir's remedio? Hit the trail. (In his case, with little more than a tin for tea and crust of bread for modest sustenance. Uber austere. But in the midst of such privations, Muir found that his carnal incrustations dissolved posthaste.)
Muir and his fellow scraggly-beard Transcendentalists, they knew the Secret of connecting with Nature. They possessed the Open Sesame mantra to unlocking the key to existential Earthly paradise. Their deep sought-after connection with Nature was (is) the most sure-fire method known to those so enamored to restore addled senses and reinstate long-lost, peaceful, easy feelings. In short to make us the best of persons.

A cure, only Earth Mother, our Mother Nature, can deliver.
For when facing down fears and confronting doubts, when feeling beaten down by life's grind, when slumping, uninspired and stressed out - the remedy is painfully simple.
Get your ass outside.
To the Great Outdoors.

Get your ass outside, Old Sport!
To the Great Outdoors, Man!

And surely JWJ did so, penning his moving coda, "come to the peaceful wood / Here bathe your soul in silence / Deep in the quiet wood."
Deep in the quiet wood. Where you do indeed find your betterself. Where crap does truly melt away. Where carnal incrustations dissolve, life's oppressive weights are lightened, and society's rude demands made a bit more bearable.
Just by walking, all is solved!
SOLVITUR AMBULANDO!
WALKING SOLVES ALL!



But even in the unhurried world of 1848, dwelling in perhaps not quite so sylvan solitude on the post-idyllic shores of Walden Pond (already the ax men were hard at work leveling his cherished forest domain), ol' Hank could not manage to get enough of a good thing, that which he called Nature's "subtle magnetism" which "will direct us aright."

As for what Thoreau thought of these "mass of men" who led lives of "quiet desperation"?
"They deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago."

An anti-social anchorite who detested the dreaded routines of his "neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together," Thoreau took solace in Mother Nature's healing balm: "I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least, - and it is commonly more than that, - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements."

Say no more.
Two years of seclusion tested the limits of Thoreau's anchorite experiment to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life." Like some spiritual paragon (or exile) in the desert, or Native American vision quester, Thoreau was heaven-bent on sucking out "all the marrow of life," and drew immense hope and courage, and fortitude and faith, from his daily forays and immersions in Nature.


Go figure, he must have thought. But, seriously, he despised the businessman and all his busy business, proclaiming it "an infinite bustle, nothing but work, work, work." The dagger line he wrote in his essay, "Life Without Principle" sums up his anti-business attitude: "I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business."

Makes you wonder if Thoreau was delirious, or finely tuned to the Infinite and Eternal Mystery at the moment of his passing?

It's what keeps us living, keeps us breathing. Walking in Nature! Absorbing water's ionic energy! Breathing in lungfuls of Tree Oxygen! Japanese lovers of Nature call it "forest bathing."

No doubt a centuries old practice, actually. In which photosynthetic and other osmotic properties of a healthy forest act to calm monkey mind, quell doubts, banish bad thoughts, and quash all negativism. It is true, just by walking, by being around water and trees and flowers and sky and earth. We become the best persons.
We become One with Mother Nature. Our True Nature.
Where body / mind / spirit infusions of high dose O-2 and blasts of the other Big O - Oxytocin - caress the senses into a heightened and sensual state of limbic-brained ecstasy.
In the bosom of the Great Mother - Mother Nature - we never had it so good.

Nothing cheers the heart more than a vigorous walk in the woods. Nothing beats breathing in fresh air. What could be more liberating than sloughing off the day's malaise, as worries and cares melt away.
Walking in Nature: the Secret to staying happy and young at heart, proclaimed herein - the Secret to staying sane! Walt Whitman affirmed that being in the open air, in touch with the earth, makes for the best persons. How can you argue?
Time to get in touch with the Earth.
Time to do a little Earthing - a practice to connect on a deeper level with Nature by going barefoot.
As kids, we did it all the time. What happened, people?!?
Come on, lace up the boots and let's dive into some Earthy Earthing, hug a tree, jump in a lake, smell the savory bark of a tree, eat some dirt, get lost! Feel life! Suck out its marrow!

Certainly, too, we can all fain return to our senses and be directed aright, in our daily Ambulandos, Solvituring it all.
And great Yukon poet Robert Service really hit emotional pay dirt with his timeless taunt, "What? you're tired and broken and beaten? Why, you're rich, you've got the earth!"
2 Comments:
Yes, a necessary and well-framed reminder of how to clean out the closet of our soul and refresh, reboot, renew! Great post and pictures as always!!
Just blasted through the pics and I gotta say there might be a romantic bone in you :)
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