Spending 40 consecutive nights in an old growth forest. That is the plan. Opening myself to whatever happens in those long dark hours as I lie awake, thinking, searching, absorbing, being. Hoping to experience the essential, and perhaps the transcendent. For a fuller explanation of the plan, as well as its logistical details, please see Seeking the Essential- Part 1.
This isn’t camping. That is the first thing I realize when reaching my chosen clearing, as the last light glows lavender above the horizon. I hadn’t really thought about it, not specifically, the difference between regular camping and this plan They seem similar at first glance, a tent staked amidst the forest with trees rising all around, as a stream rushes nearby. But everything else is different.
If this were camping, it would go like this. We find a location for the evening, choosing a spot that is fairly flat though slightly sloped (allowing for drainage), amidst the trees (checking first for potential widow makers), not rocky, and preferably having a beautiful view. Once the spot is chosen, we remove any stones and other protruding objects from a rectangle of ground, and set up the tent.
I already did that part days ago, so every evening when I arrive, the location is already prepped, the tent anchored, ready to go.
How camping usually proceeds. After setting up the tent, we build a fire ring using rocks from the surrounding forest, gather fallen dried wood, and set the fire ablazing. We then cook good food, drink good drinks, and spend hours around that fire talking about anything and everything. While enjoying the breeze and rising cool and flicker-lighted surroundings, the sky darkly vast above us. Until finally, happily tired, we put out the fire, crawl into the tent, and fall fast asleep.
That is camping. This is not. Or perhaps a very different kind. No fire, no food, no company. Nothing specific to do, no tasks to accomplish. Simply me, alone, amidst the wild forest, with no objective other than experiencing.
So I do. Experience, that is. I sit on the ground as night rises around me. The warmth of the day recedes into coolness, as silver moonlight cuts through the trees, faintly illuminating. Enough light, just enough, so that the trees still rise individually around the clearing.
It is silent at first. Too silent for a living forest, and too still, no hint of anything beyond the rushing of risen creek water. I have caused this silence with my unexpected presence, a bumbling human walking amidst the woods, for a half hour from front door to tent. A bumbling, lumbering strange beast, trying my best to walk quietly, without disturbing, but the animals hear my movement, scent my strange human scent, so they pause, waiting and listening. Watchful and wary. Sitting there by the tent, I can’t see them, but I can almost sense them. Almost. Perhaps more fanciful perception than true acuity, but I know they live right out there, all around me. I can’t see them, but they see me.
I sit there without making a sound, making no motion. And slowly, slowly, living sounds begin reemerging. It takes longer than I would have thought. How long, I don’t know, having no specific way to mark time. But eventually I hear something scampering along a tree limb nearby, a few minutes later something else rustles through ground detritus. And other sounds as well, farther away. Perhaps creatures moving, perhaps branches creaking in the slight breeze.
On my person I keep the little hand-held air horn along with the knife. I’m not the top of the food chain out here, a truth that recurs to me with every noise I hear.
Sounds punctuate the rushing silence now and again, as scents rise from the area. It was warm during the day, sunlight shining down between deciduous trees still naked of leaves, heating the forest floor, so even now in early evening the air smells of the dried leaves and dried pine needles that carpet the ground. Underlying that is the unmistakable scent of flowing creek water. Its very own thing, fresh and clear and yet somehow also mossy, and fecund like black earth.
I’m trying to describe this forest evening, but explaining each aspect elides the holistic experience. I sit amidst a thriving, teeming, complex forest, sights and scents and sounds of many kinds all around me, myself the very least element among them, four senses fully engaged. Five even, because the air tastes of those dried leaves and needles, of that mossy clear water. As ground moisture evaporates all around me, cooling bare skin.
I sit at first, but the view is limited, laterally into the forest, so I lie down, the whole wide world opening above me. The nearly full moon is bright, but so many stars are still visible in the dark sky. Small stones press here and there into my back, pine needles tangle in my hair, as those branches spread against the glowing sky.
Don’t think, I tell myself. I am a thinker. So many thoughts of endless kinds continually arising, drawing me along unexpected paths of both reason and reverie. But not here, not on this first night. Thirty-nine more nights await me, nights during which thoughts of many and any kinds can flow through me. Tonight I want to simply be. Be present in the moment, in this forest, using those five senses to experience it. It, and nothing else. External.
Easier said than done. The monkey mind isn’t readily quieted, jumping from here to there and over yonder with gleeful enthusiasm. But I try to tame it. Every time a thought arises, quickly leading to another and another, I bring my focus back to this forest. Look and listen, observe every last facet. Observe without thinking particular thoughts about it. Exist here and now, nothing else beyond it.
Minutes pass, adding together into hours that here mean nothing. Here time flows continuously, unsegmented. And slowly my mind quiets, longer stretches without thought intruding, my lying there still and quiet, longer and longer stretches until I feel that I am indeed a small part of the forest, intrinsic to it. Perhaps like a smooth river rock or a fallen pinecone. One tiny aspect of something much greater.
Hours and hours pass, marked only by the arc the moon has traveled. Eventually, sometime in early morning, a lovely weariness enwraps me, so I go into the tent, zipping the fly behind me, pull the blanket over, and fall into a deep sleep, quiet and replete.
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Wonderful! Looking forward to all of these!