IT’S THE DETAILS that do it for me. It’s the details that I step into nature for. It’s not the Big Views, not the ‘numbers’ walked, not the time taken, not the hard-to-reach famous locations to namedrop later… but the plain old details, and what they do In The Moment, the experience of them, the senses and instincts and emotions they stir…
Take the roughness of wood in hand, the feel of a twenty-year-old weather-beaten picket-fence post as I close the front gate, and the click of the gate latch; a story by touch and sound of leaving home and heading again into the hills.
Take the detail of hard pavement underfoot becoming loose gravel 150 paces beyond the gate, a simple but profound transition from the earth we’ve murdered beneath asphalt and concrete to the earth as it’s meant to be: a living earth open to the sky.
Then, the details of breath becoming labored as the angle increases, and of muscles having to work just a little harder for each uphill step, and the detail of one’s body finding the right rhythm, settling into a pace that can be sustained, and through it horizons growing, and space increasing, and a sense of freedom developing, and the insanity of our mixed-up world falling away.
Details…
Spiky mountain mahogany limbs reaching out to scratch my limbs as I walk by. Abstract art within mahogany thickets: sunlight, shade, and intertwined stems and twigs, a beautiful mesmerizing mesh, animated by my motion. Loose basalt marbles on the trail, care needed, steps deliberately taken. Hard-edged basalt in hand on the steep final pull onto the plateau… then, wide open space and a rolling sea of winter-dried grass, yellow-white-gray, swaying in the wind, audible if you stop and listen to it, a soft song with a message that can only be felt, never understood in words. Spikes everywhere: ball cactus, prickly pear, yucca; plants that will never be anything other than exotic to me, and never less than inspiring for their cleverly-evolved survival adaptations. Distant movement: mule deer grazing, fellow citizens of nature living parallel lives to ours, inspiring also for how they somehow get by on a bone-dry semi-desert mountain. Birds in motion, birds singing, flitting and darting across the deep blue Colorado sky.
Details…
Later, across the valley, on another trail – a rising-rising trail – the detail of plunging into shade cast by a forest of ponderosa pines as though plunging into blissful cold water; the detail of clean rejuvenating air, of sweet-sweet woodsy scents, of volatile organic compounds that provide a beneficial health-enhancing natural high that artificial pharmaceuticals can’t ever match.
Later, silence that isn’t silence when you stop and sit for a while and actually listen to it. Stillness that isn’t stillness when you close your eyes and reach out into the forest and across the hills with every sense and instinct you posses. Give it enough time and the forest throbs around you with life. It throbs with sheer presence, even in the midst of a dormant and abnormally dry winter. Give enough of yourself to it and the natural world can be like a blanket to pull on tight. Feel the comfort and reassurance of it envelop you. Eyes closed, heart open, one can merge into something far, far greater…
Then, goodness, the golden evening light! From low to the west it shines across the land and everything becomes hyper-real as though you’ve fallen into a fantasy movie, a magical realm that’s too glorious by far to be real.
But real it is!
And at sunset, as the day reaches its crescendo, the natural home you’ve chosen to visit becomes even more real, which would have seemed impossible earlier, but now you’ve seen it for yourself you know it’s true. There’s nothing fake about it. Nothing inauthentic. There’s no ai in sight. There’s no need for anything digital. You know it through every sense. You connect with it through every sense. The night wind now roaring through the pines. Winter cold suddenly painful on exposed skin. The afterglow of the departed sun on the western horizon. The first stars overhead. Bright silver moonlight and deep shadows on the forest floor. A great horned owl hooting – what a treat!
All of it combined… the multitude of details built layer upon layer… infinite details when you start to pay attention to them… goodness how they stir! They are medicine for troubled times. They are a source to rely on that will never lie or deceive. They bring balance, perspective, and above all truth. No, above all joy!
Yep, it’s the details that do it for me. It’s for them that I go. It’s for them more than any other reason. It’s for how they root me in life, for how they give me a home in the immediacy of now.
Details! Never forget to pay attention to the details.
