Wilderness Wisdom Quotes

Ô, Wanderess, Wanderess When did you feel your most euphoric kiss? Was I the source of your greatest bliss?

As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness -- just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory.

Our lips were for each other and our eyes were full of dreams. We knew nothing of travel and we knew nothing of loss. Ours was a world of eternal spring, until the summer came.

There is nothing wrong with God's plan that man should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.

Some of us are drawn to mountains the way the moon draws the tide. Both the great forests and the mountains live in my bones. They have taught me, humbled me, purified me and changed me.

Nature is an outcry, unpolished truth; the art—a euphemism—tamed wilderness.

Everybody has a right to their own troubles.

Why is it that we don’t worry about a compass until we’re lost in a wilderness of our own making?

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

You've got to love life to have life, and you've got to have life to love life.

It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it.

Ô, Muse of the Heart’s Passion, let me relive my Love’s memory, to remember her body, so brave and so free, and the sound of my Dreameress singing to me, and the scent of my Dreameress sleeping by me, Ô, sing, sweet Muse, my soliloquy!

The trees show definitions of themselves subtly like the face of a man.

In the wilderness of life Happiness is looking for you In the jungles of dreams and desires, In the beauty of shrubs and flowers, In the span of sadness and kindness. In the deepness of hearts and minds.

Childhood is a wilderness.

If wisdom's ways you wisely seek, five things observe with care: to whom you speak, of whom you speak, and how and when and where. Your loving mother, C. L. Ingalls.

If you think Atticus Finch went home at night and slept easy because he knew he was doing the right thing, you're wrong....Because even one voice in a wilderness of ignorance is a voice that is heard by someone. Because every woman and man, no matter their color or their religion, is entitled to a good defense. And because Jem and Scout would grow up to be like their father, spreading his wisdom, understanding his compassion and sharing his strength which are the only, the only weapons we have against injustice.

Periods in the wilderness or desert were not lost time. You might find life, wildflowers, fossils, sources of water. I wish there were shortcuts to wisdom and self-knowledge: cuter abysses or three-day spa wilderness experiences. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. I so resent this.

In the same way that the picturesque designers were always careful to include some reminder of our mortality in their gardens -- a ruin, sometimes even a dead tree -- the act of leaving parts of the garden untended, and calling attention to its margins, seems to undermine any pretense to perfect power or wisdom on the part of the gardener. The margins of our gardens can be tropes too, but figures of irony rather than transcendence -- antidotes, in fact, to our hubris. It may be in the margins of our gardens that we can discover fresh ways to bring our aesthetics and our ethics about the land into some meaningful alignment.

Every falling leaf reminds me that I too will soon be separated from these trees. Trying to capture freedom is like trying to catch a falling leaf. Occasionally you may grab one out of the air and hold it in your hands, but now what?

You could buy a suckling pig with it, if you want to. You could raise it, and it would raise a litter of pigs, worth four, five dollars apiece. Or you can trade that half-dollar for lemonade, and drink it up. You do as you want, it's your money.

In spite of the string of magazine covers announcing the contrary, we all know that ten simple things will not save the earth. There are, rather, three thousand impossible things that all of us must do, and changing our light bulbs, while necessary, is the barest beginning. We are being called upon to act against a prevailing culture, to undermine our own entrenched tendency to accumulate and to consume, and to refuse to define our individuality by our presumed ability to do whatever we want.

We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

We are being called upon to act against a prevailing culture, to undermine our own entrenched tendency to accumulate and to consume, and to refuse to define our individuality by our presumed ability to do whatever we want.

Most often women want happiness and men want wilderness.

Forgiveness is alchemy of the soul in which the feeling of possibility returns to the human spirit.

The wilderness journey is about transformation. For you, it could be a personal, spiritual, or professional drought. A desert season of confusion, frustration, and unproductivity. It's an in between stage. Something significant has ended or begun. Yet it provides opportunity for expansion, wisdom, and joy.

....hope is 'that virtue by which we take responsibility for the future.' ...hope is our positive orientation toward the future, a future in which we simultaneously recognize difficulty, responsibility, and delight. Hope is not relative to the present situation, nor is it dependent upon a specific outcome... Hope is not an antidote to despair, or a sidestepping of difficulty, but a companion to all these things.

There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul’s path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

Don’t look outside in the world or in wilderness to find the peace, look inside your heart, where it resides.

Darkest times, great men evolve.

Cherish kindness, even when you are living in wilderness.

Oh! Happiness I am looking for you In the wilderness, In and around the palaces, In my possessions, in my wealth and splendor, I can see you far away, Like an illusion, I try to touch feel and smell but, Like a morichica you dance far away.

When you’re in the wild, there’s nothing to hide behind. No bars or credit cards or movie theatres or cell phones or credentials or security. You’re just alone with yourself. You look around and lose yourself in the mountains, rivers, forests or tundra, but you can see nothing except for the chaos in your own mind. It is fucking terrifying and peaceful at the same time.

It is an old story, that men sell themselves to the tempter, and sign a bond with their blood, because it is only to take effect at a distant day; then rush on to snatch the cup their souls thirst after with an impulse not the less savage because there is a dark shadow beside them forevermore. There is no short cut, no patent tram-road to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light withing light. It seems like a metaphor for something. So much does. Ralph Waldo Emerson is excellent on this point. It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. Or marriage within friendship and love. I'll try to remember to use this. I believe I see a place for it in my thoughts on Hagar and Ishmael. Their time in the wilderness seems like a specific moment of divine Providence within the whole providential regime of Creation.

And at once he sacrificed everything to it, if it can be said we ever sacrifice anything save what we know we can never attain, or what some secret wisdom tells us it would be uncomfortable or saddening to possess.

[Wild animals], and the beautiful landscapes that sustain them...possess a value and a virtue regardless of our dwindling connection with them. It seems that there is a virtue and a wisdom in keeping some things beyond our reach: that the protection of wilderness itself is imperative... We have touched, and are consuming, everything. The world is very old, and we are so new. I like the feeling of awe--what the late writer Wallace Stegner called 'the birth of awe'--in beholding wild country not reduced by man. I like to remember that it is wild country that gives rise to wild animals; and that the marvelous specificity of wild animals reminds us to wake up, to let our senses be inflamed by every scent and sound and sight and taste and touch of the world. I like to remember that we are not here forever, and not here alone, and that the respect with which we behold the wild world matters, if anything does.

Denying our children the opportunity to gain wisdom directly from the trees and dance in the moonlight with the other high lonesome renegades and limping outlaws is about our own fear and comfort. Their hearts need to know the wild too.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.45

This is one of the blessings of the urban nature project: without the overtly magnificent to stop us in our tracks, we must seek out the more subversively magnificent. Our sense of what constitutes wildness is expanded, and our sense of wonder along with it.

The wilderness is a place of an encounter with the Creator.

God determine the time and duration in the wilderness for every man.

We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us

Wonder, as a quality of intellect, has fallen from favor.

We walk alone in the wilderness.

If you live in the desert, view the sun not as your enemy, but as your friend. If you live in the wilderness, view nature not as your adversary, but as your companion.

When we call a place by name it is transformed from wilderness to homeland.

Wonder feeds our best intelligence and is perhaps its source.

As we work to know the life that surrounds us, we stand in a lineage of naturalists — past, present, and even future. We join the "cloud of witnesses" who refuse to let the more-than-human world pass unnoticed.

Surely there is a continuum from a pure, undefiled wilderness to a trammeled concrete industrial area. But there is no place, we now know, as the relentlessly global impacts of climate change become increasingly understood, that humans have left untouched; and there is no place that the wild does not, in some small way, proclaim itself.

When we are humbled and completely dependent on the Lord in the wilderness, it teaches us to remember, even in times of comfort and abundance, that it is God’s faithfulness and power, and not our own strength or wisdom, that we most need.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness that no one else can take for us, that no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

Questions lead to further questions, and inquiry breeds insight. Gathering expertise brings both confidence and consolation. E. O. Wilson wrote: "You start by loving a subject. Birds, probability theory, stars, differential equations, storm fronts, sign language, swallowtail butterflies....The subject will be your lodestar and give sanctuary in the shifting mental universe.

With my new habit of carrying binoculars everywhere, I feel imbued with a readiness to see, an attitude that my life itself is a kind of field trip. The urban naturalist has the terrific luxury of stepping out her door and into "the field," without long rides or carpools, or putting money in for gas and Dairy Queen. When does the field trip being? Whenever we start paying attention.

The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean and try to make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken coop; but the kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on to prove himself inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the situation around and imagine how he would like it to have a well-meaning savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no bed, no covering for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to eat but snakes and grubs and offal. This would be a hell to him; and if he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to the savage - but he hasn't any, and has never had any; and for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter with them.

I am no ecological Pollyana. I have borne, and will continue to bear, feelings of wholehearted melancholy over the ecological state of the earth. How could I not? How could anyone not? But I am unwilling to become a hand-wringing nihilist, as some environmental 'realists' seem to believe is the more mature posture. Instead, I choose to dwell, as Emily Dickinson famously suggested, in possibility, where we cannot predict what will happen but we make space for it, whatever it is, and realize that our participation has value. This is grown-up optimism, where our bondedness with the rest of creation, a sense of profound interaction, and a belief in our shared ingenuity give meaning to our lives and actions on behalf of the more-than-human world.

The wilderness was the testing ground—the deciding place. It was a place of God revealing himself in a whole new and deeper way. Would his people trust him completely, confident in his goodness, wisdom, and power? Those who believed God to be who he said he was moved on into the promised land; many did not.

Then you understand the wide range of the totally new and unexpected creations they can sometimes come up with. Most people’s minds travel along the same road traveled by everyone else, never straying off the route of conventional wisdom. Makers know no such boundaries. They have a rare ability to make their own roads of thought. Their minds venture through the wilderness of all that exists, combining random bits of knowledge in ways that have never been imagined before.

Mountain’s realization comes through the details of the breath, mountain appears in each step. Mountain then lives inside our bones, inside our heart-drum. It stands like a huge mother in the atmosphere of our minds. Mountain draws ancestors together in the form of clouds. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the raining of the past. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the winds of the future. Mountain mother is a birth gate that joins the above and below, she is a prayer house, she is a mountain. Mountain is a mountain.

a person who tries to use reasoning to explain faith gets lost in the wilderness of incomprehension.

We rely only on God in the wilderness.

Beauty is the wilderness of sensual perception where we always want to get lost.

Warriors walks in a lonely wilderness.

the person who had loved me first and fiercest, my rock of steadfast support during every crazy and ill-advised decision I had ever made, my touchstone who made me laugh during good times and cried with me and shored me up during hard times, the woman whose wit and wisdom were razor sharp, would never open her eyes again and, soon, would not be alive on this earth any longer.

Often we can get caught in our own struggles, our own small stories, that we forget our place in the larger story arc – the way that our actions, our choices, our achievements can and will blaze trails for that who come after us, so that they do not have to spend their time and energy re-fighting the same battles. For sure we walk a spiral path, but for generations of women the spirals were so tightly packed that it seemed they were going round in circles – let us blaze trails so that the path we walk takes in wider and wider sweeps of human experience. Trail blazing is what we do when we find ourselves in the wilderness, with no path to guide us but our own intuitive understanding of nature and our destination. At times we must walk through the night, guided only by the stars. We know when to sit and rest, to shelter from storms, when to gather water, and what on the trail will sustain us and what will do us harm. We are courageous and cautious in equal measure, but we are driven forward, not only by our own desire to reach our destination, but also by the desire to leave a viable way for others who follow. Trail blazing is an art-form. It is how we find paths through what before was wilderness. We push aside braches, or cut them back, we tramp down nettles and long grasses, ford rivers and streams, through the inner and outer landscapes.

Mountains have long been a geography for pilgrimage, place where people have been humbled and strengthened, they are symbols of the sacred center. Many have traveled to them in order to find the concentrated energy of Earth and to realize the strength of unimpeded space. Viewing a mountain at a distance or walking around its body we can see its shape, know its profile, survey its surrounds. The closer you come to the mountain the more it disappears, the mountain begins to lose its shape as you near it, its body begins to spread out over the landscape losing itself to itself. On climbing the mountain the mountain continues to vanish. It vanishes in the detail of each step, its crown is buried in space, its body is buried in the breath. On reaching the mountain summit we can ask, “What has been attained?” - The top of the mountain? Big view? But the mountain has already disappeared. Going down the mountain we can ask, “What has been attained?” Going down the mountain the closer we are to the mountain the more the mountain disappears, the closer we are to the mountain the more the mountain is realized. Mountain’s realization comes through the details of the breath, mountain appears in each step. Mountain then lives inside our bones, inside our heart-drum. It stands like a huge mother in the atmosphere of our minds. Mountain draws ancestors together in the form of clouds. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the raining of the past. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the winds of the future. Mountain mother is a birth gate that joins the above and below, she is a prayer house, she is a mountain. Mountain is a mountain.

We do not qualify as biblical simply by quoting the Bible. We are biblical only when we share life in the wilderness with those who are tempted and fall, when we carry the cross of Jesus, and when we love extravagantly in Jesus’s name.

I believe that the most tragic war of our time is the one within—a war between what we knew as children and what we’ve learned as adults. A war between wisdom and intelligence. A war between the natural colour of our hair and the colour we chemically impose upon it. A war between the manicured hedges and the untouched wilderness. A war between reality and fairy tales. A war between what we could learn about the world and what we are systematically taught. A war that can end in peace.

There is no man,’ he began, ‘however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man—so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise—unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. I know that there are young fellows, the sons and grand sons of famous men, whose masters have instilled into them nobility of mind and moral refinement in their schooldays. They have, perhaps, when they look back upon their past lives, nothing to retract; they can, if they choose, publish a signed account of everything they have ever said or done; but they are poor creatures, feeble descendants of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile. We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you are not the result of training at home, by a father, or by masters at school, they have sprung from beginnings of a very different order, by reaction from the influence of everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory. I can see that the picture of what we once were, in early youth, may not be recognisable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life. But we must not deny the truth of it, for it is evidence that we have really lived, that it is in accordance with the laws of life and of the mind that we have, from the common elements of life, of the life of studios, of artistic groups—assuming that one is a painter—extracted something that goes beyond them.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. —Marcel Proust

I walked, floated, lighter—forty miles, my biggest day yet. I'd lifted the burden of guilt and shame off my body. I held my new hard-won wisdom, the gift three months of walking in the wilderness had carried me to: compassion for my younger self—forgiveness for my innocence.

The wilderness season is a part of God's plan. You have to go through it so you will be prepared for the blessings of God. If you are in the wilderness season, use this time to gain wisdom and to get stronger. There is no overnight success. Trust the process. Trust God's plan.

But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. *** Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares. *** ...perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps!

Even a man as wilderness-averse as Aldous Huxley came to understand that “a man misses something by not establishing a participative and living relationship with the non-human world of animals and plants, landscapes and stars and seasons. By failing to be, vicariously, the not-self, he fails to be completely himself.” This is the most succinct definition of the wilderness I have found: the not-self. There, in the one place we have not remolded in our image, a very deep and ancient form of wisdom can be found. “At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman,” wrote Albert Camus.

There is no man,” [the painter Elstir] began, “however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man—so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise—unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. . . . We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.” Marcel Proust Within a Budding Grove (translated by C. Scott Moncrieff)

The Fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom, and therefore belongs to the beginnings, and is felt in the first cold hours before the dawn of civilisation; the power that comes out of the wilderness and rides on the whirlwind and breaks the gods of stone; the power before which the eastern nations are prostrate like a pavement; the power before which the primitive prophets run naked and shouting, at once proclaiming and escaping from their god; the fear that is rightly rooted in the beginnings of every religion, true or false: the fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom; but not the end.

The world—this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I launch eagerly into this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of those next me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, taught by an instinct that so shall the dumb abyss[43] be vocal with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its fear;[44] I dispose of it within the circuit of my expanding life. So much only of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilderness have I vanquished and planted, or so far have I extended my being, my dominion. I do not see how any man can afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. It is pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one else can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory. I can see that picture of what we were at an earlier stage may not be recognisable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life. But we must not repudiate it, for it is a proof that we have really lived, that it is in accordance with the laws of life and of the mind that we have, from the common elements of life, of the life of studios, of artistic groups—assuming one is a painter—extracted something that transcends them.

Seeds achieve their highest potential in dirt. Birds achieve their highest potential in air. Fish achieve their highest potential in water. Stars achieve their highest potential in darkness. Serpents achieve their highest potential in grass. Monkeys achieve their highest potential in trees. Bats achieve their highest potential in caves. Flowers achieve their highest potential in soil. Worms achieve their highest potential in clay. Crocodiles achieve their highest potential in rivers. Sheep achieve their highest potential in pastures. Termites achieve their highest potential in woodlands. Sharks achieve their highest potential in oceans. Vultures achieve their highest potential in droughts. Sharks achieve their highest potential in oceans. Spiders achieve their highest potential in wildernesses. Camels achieve their highest potential in deserts. Wolves achieve their highest potential in forests. Foxes achieve their highest potential in bushes. Lions achieve their highest potential in jungles.

The way our Lord Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he said. He told me that the true wilderness for a Christian man’s soul was when his sight and senses were blocked—then he would follow the footsteps of the Lord out of the wilderness, even if his body was still with his brothers or kinsmen. He read to me from the books of Saint Bernard about such things. And when a soul realizes that God has chosen him for such a difficult test of his manhood, then he shouldn’t be afraid that he won’t have the strength. God knows my soul better than the soul knows itself.” He continued to talk to his mother in this manner, consoling her with a wisdom and strength of spirit that seemed far beyond his years.

Why this cult of wilderness? Why the surly hatred of progress and development, the churlish resistance to all popular improvements? Very well, a fair question, but it’s been asked and answered a thousand times already; enough books to drive a man stark naked mad have dealt in detail with the question. There are many answers, all good, each sufficient. Peace is often mentioned; beauty; spiritual refreshment, whatever that means; re-creation for the soul, whatever that is; escape; novelty, the delight of something different; truth and understanding and wisdom—commendable virtues in any man, anytime; ecology and all that, meaning the salvation of variety, diversity, possibility and potentiality, the preservation of the genetic reservoir, the answers to questions that we have not yet even learned to ask, a connection to the origin of things, an opening into the future, a source of sanity for the present—all true, all wonderful, all more than enough to answer such a dumb dead degrading question as “Why wilderness?” To which, nevertheless, I shall append one further answer anyway: because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger.

Хіба всю мудрість не варто віддати за однісінький шматочок невеличкого поганенького пориву? Мудрість шкідлива, коли не служити пориву... Це зрозуміло, і це трагедія! Щоб жити, треба знати, а знання вбиває. Людськість хитається між дикунством і культурою. А їх треба поєднати, не протиставити! Мудрість, де не бринить тонкий відгомін голодного вию й поклику на самицю — є мудрість смерти...

Whenever I renew a commitment to studying raptors or gulls or crows or the birds in my backyard, more are given, more show themselves. Our efforts are rewarded, our studies are enhanced in experience. I cannot explain this, and I am reluctant to sound to woo-woo but we can take this as confidently as if it came from the Oracle at Delphi: the more we prepare, the more we are "allowed" somehow to see.

was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast.

On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast.

Life’s shrouded crossing seems to jump off with a hunger to take a blood-quickening journey, a desire to search for enchantment over the next hillock. We launch our feral voyage with a primitive pulsation to explore unknown lands and a desire to become acquainted with both village people and sophisticated ancient civilizations. Along the way, we will meet friends and foes. In our lightest moments, we will make love to a beautiful mate under a canopy of stars. In the darkest hours, we will fret about how to evade danger and scheme how best to conquer our enemies. The rainbow of experiences that we endure will undoubtedly bemuse, bruise, batter, and occasionally sully us. These hard on the hide shards of experience will also reveal our polychromatous character. By undertaking vivid encounters in the wilderness, with any luck, we will discover a numinous interior world. With immersion into a myriad of life shaping experiences, an undeterred person will stumble onto a path leading to personal illumination. The passage of liberation that a crusader must inevitably endure leads to a shocking psychological transformation, a spiritual overhaul allowing the seeker to finally overcome infantile images and febrile delusions that would otherwise continue to derail their fervent urge to forge an emergent personality, acquire wisdom, and attain bliss.

You will study the wisdom of the past, for in a wilderness of conflicting counsels, a trail has there been blazed. You will study the life of mankind, for this is the life you must order, and, to order with wisdom, must know. You will study the precepts of justice, for these are the truths that through you shall come to their hour of triumph. Here is the high emprise, the fine endeavor, the splendid possibility of achievement, to which I summon you and bid you welcome.

Walker-thinkers have found various ways to accommodate the gifts that their walking brings. Caught paperless on his walks in the Czech enclaves of Iowa, maestro Dvořák scribbles the string quartets that visited his brain on his starched white shirt cuffs (so the legend goes). More proactively, Thomas Hobbes fashioned a walking stick for himself with an inkwell attached, and modern poet Mary Oliver leaves pencils in the trees along her usual pathways, in case a poem descends during her rambles.

A shark does not ask for permission to rule the waters. A bear does not ask for permission to rule the woods. A wolf does not ask for permission to rule the forest. A camel does not ask for permission to rule the desert. A lion does not ask for permission to rule the jungle. Trees do not ask for permission to rule woodlands. Gravel does not ask for permission to rule mountains. Light does not ask for permission to rule summer. Wind does not ask for permission to rule autumn. Snow does not ask for permission to rule winter. Water does not ask for permission to rule the sea. Plants do not ask for permission to rule rainforests. Animals do not ask for permission to rule wildernesses. Stars do not ask for permission to rule the sky. Nature does not ask for permission to rule the world. An eagle achieves more than a turkey in a lifetime. A leopard achieves more than a hyena in a lifetime. A fox achieves more than a rabbit in a lifetime. A falcon achieves more than a vulture in a lifetime. A lion achieves more than a sheep in a lifetime. A leader achieves more than a student in a lifetime. A saint achieves more than a sinner in a lifetime. A prophet achieves more than a priest in a lifetime. A master achieves more than a disciple in a lifetime. A conqueror achieves more than a warrior in a lifetime. A hero achieves more than a villain in a lifetime. A maestro achieves more than an apprentice in a lifetime. A genius achieves more than a talent in a lifetime. A star achieves more than a critic in a lifetime. A legend achieves more than a champion in a lifetime.

In certain ancient civilizations and indigenous cultures there was often a process of initiation that young people would go through before they became adults. In some Native American traditions, for example, the initiate would be put out into the wilderness without any food or any other provisions for survival. He would have to rely on the Universe and his own soul. During the experience, the initiate would fast. He would experience himself confronting the Universe alone. He would be out there for a number of days. This would open up the initiate to a direct experience of something beyond the usual egoic mind and all of its concerns. The initiate would be thrust into an experience that would take him beyond his small, limited self. Such a process existed in our own Tradition going back to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. What was Muhammad doing in a cave when the first revelations of the Qur‘an began if not going through what Native Americans would call a „Vision Quest“? He received direct revelation and inspiration through this practice. (p. 12)

On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world was shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for the well-being of all. On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruit that bent the branches low. In order to ear, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast. Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven. And then they met—the offspring of Skywoman and the children of Eve- and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories.

owning states, since he was an ardent Abolitionist). Among those directly inspired by Emerson’s lectures and writings were Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson (the two greatest American poets of the Nineteenth Century), Henry David Thoreau (the greatest literary observer of nature), John Muir (wilderness advocate and “Father of the National Parks”), and William James (pioneering psychologist and founder of Pragmatic philosophy). He also met President Abraham Lincoln and encouraged him to declare an end to slavery, which he did the next year with the Emancipation Proclamation. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s reach was vast, and his influence has continued to reverberate through every succeeding generation.

The more you love roses the more you must bear with thorns. The more you love honey the more you must bear with bees. The more you love plants the more you must bear with soil. The more you love fruits the more you must bear with trees. The more you love forests the more you must bear with wolves. The more you love jungles the more you must bear with lions. The more you love wildernesses the more you must bear with beasts. The more you love sharks the more you must bear with oceans. The more you love rainbows the more you must bear with storms. The more you love summer the more you must bear with heat. The more you love winter the more you must bear with cold. The more you love light the more you must bear with darkness. The more you love space the more you must bear with clutter. The more you love order the more you must bear with chaos. The more you love silence the more you must bear with sound. The more you love truth the more you must bear with opinions. The more you love proof the more you must bear with suspicion. The more you love existence the more you must bear with oblivion. The more you love life the more you must bear with death. The more you love beginnings the more you must bear with endings. The more you love science the more you must bear with curiosity. The more you love nature the more you must bear with technology. The more you love faith the more you must bear with reality. The more you love time the more you must bear with mortality.

One UniVerse for the Living While palaces attest to the power of men, And monuments mark their wars, Little remains of the women who've been- Except for the sons that they bore. But the voices of women were baked into bread And later buttered with epics While the souls of their daughters Stitched with fine thread Became tapestries stored in attics. And all through the ages Men boasted like beasts Erecting pillars of marble and stone, But still they found themselves only to be Sculpted of flesh and bone. Philosophers pondered the nature of gods Outlawing temptations that plagued them And earning themselves, against all odds, The power to punish the pagans. By writing themselves into sacred books The clergymen sealed our fate To follow decrees that have their roots In nothing but misguided hate. So, children of Adam and invisible Eve, challenge the wisdom of sages. Don’t be so sure sacred scrolls that you read Aren't filled with human pages. Walk in the wilderness. Eat of the fruit. Don't let them buy you with wages. Plant your own garden. Drink of the wine. Learn how to be courageous. Hearts that are hardened To what is divine Have honored the dead too long. Search for the stories Baked into bread And eat until you are strong.

But why, the questioner insists, why do people like you pretend to love uninhabited country so much? Why this cult of wilderness? Why the surly hatred of progress and development, the churlish resistance to all popular improvements? Very well, a fair question, but it’s been asked and answered a thousand times already; enough books to drive a man stark naked mad have dealt in detail with the question. There are many answers, all good, each sufficient. Peace is often mentioned; beauty; spiritual refreshment, whatever that means; re-creation for the soul, whatever that is; escape; novelty, the delight of something different; truth and understanding and wisdom—commendable virtues in any man, anytime; ecology and all that, meaning the salvation of variety, diversity, possibility and potentiality, the preservation of the genetic reservoir, the answers to questions that we have not yet even learned to ask, a connection to the origin of things, an opening into the future, a source of sanity for the present—all true, all wonderful, all more than enough to answer such a dumb dead degrading question as “Why wilderness?” To which, nevertheless, I shall append one further answer anyway: because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger

But why, the questioner insists, why do people like you pretend to love uninhabited country so much? Why this cult of wilderness? Why the surly hatred of progress and development, the churlish resistance to all popular improvements? Very well, a fair question, but it’s been asked and answered a thousand times already; enough books to drive a man stark naked mad have dealt in detail with the question. There are many answers, all good, each sufficient. Peace is often mentioned; beauty; spiritual refreshment, whatever that means; re-creation for the soul, whatever that is; escape; novelty, the delight of something different; truth and understanding and wisdom—commendable virtues in any man, anytime; ecology and all that, meaning the salvation of variety, diversity, possibility and potentiality, the preservation of the genetic reservoir, the answers to questions that we have not yet even learned to ask, a connection to the origin of things, an opening into the future, a source of sanity for the present—all true, all wonderful, all more than enough to answer such a dumb dead degrading question as “Why wilderness?” To which, nevertheless, I shall append one further answer anyway: because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger.