Most people think that getting lost in the wilderness is the worst possible outcome when wandering into a wild unknown.
But it’s not as bad as some would think. You pick a path and you walk it, maybe observe pristine nature in its purest form, shed a pound or two, spot some sort of wildlife roaming around—although, not necessarily the kind when you find yourself knee deep in a bush with your pants around your ankles asking the accidental passerby, “pardon us stranger, but might you know of a bathroom around these parts?”
This I know from experience. And we’ll leave that little backstory up to the reader’s frisky imagination.
And though I am the furthest thing from the Clark half of the duo known from the infamous Lewis & Clark expedition, I often wander deep into my own wild, mighty fine without knowing where I might end up.
Because it’s true, in this life nothing has ever helped me as much as losing my way in an unknown stretch of wilderness in which I’m unfamiliar with. It's a lot like losing yourself in a blank piece of paper.
And just so we are clear, I’m not talking about the hundreds of rough-and-ready square miles of the Frank Church wilderness here, where writers and wolves might feast on your pretty little heart and soul in the dark, underneath the moonlght. I’m speaking of the sort of wilderness some might call their own outdoor church, and I—with them—wholeheartedly agree, because I feel more in tune with my free spirit in the wilderness than anywhere else.
One is much better off seeking a normal wilderness though, about eleven or so miles across and eleven miles deep. One in which you’re bound to pop out on top of a mountain with quite the view, or, at some point, wherever you’re meant to be, no matter how far off the beaten path you go.
Off The Beaten Path
So much of our stress and anxiety about the future, about where we will end up, often stems from all the analysis and over-thinking we do as adults.
We always ask ourselves all sorts of questions.
Hell, I can recall countless nights lying awake, staring at my desk, then out the window, all the while entertaining ideas, wrestling with my creative soul about this, that, and all sorts of other things too.
I was trying so damn hard to figure out where I would end up that I would feel defeated before I even began.
But all the over-analysis still got me nowhere; it just burned away more precious time.
The reality is that no matter how smart and organized we may think we are, we cannot expect the future to happen the way we want it to. Shit is moving so fast and we’re so interconnected that it is impossible to predict where we’ll end up even ia couple minutes from the end of this sentence, or better yet, even a few months from now.
You just don’t know. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you will not be basing your choice of direction on the extended forecast of your gut feeling that’s likely to be wrong in the way of self-expectations.
You can't force gut feelings, but you can watch what you mentally eat and excrete from your mouth.
You’ll be making your choice on what’s really important to you, right in front of you and in the now, not tomorrow.
Because by recognizing and ultimately accepting the unpredictable nature of life, we can stop overthinking and overanalyzing, and start living more in the present moment.
This helps to open the mind up to the possibilities of not tomorrow, or the next day, but the possibility of today.
And even though, we do unfortunately, like to fight for so much control in our lives, and yet, I find it rather ironic that we feel so frighteningly undisturbed without really having any control of things whatsoever.
We all have smartphones attached to our ass, our eyes, and in our cars directing us when exactly to take that left turn, with watches on our wrists chiming in on how many steps we’ve taken and how many more we need to take to hit our goal of predetermined daily movement. Our phones know us better than we do, and that's a scary fucking thing.
We wheel and deal in meta-rhythmic analytics, mostly over-evaluating the quality of our own thoughts, creations, and strengths. Everything is a creative comparison to someone, something else, or some overblown internal expectation of how things should be by the one doing the perceiving.
But the soul can surprise even itself when lost in the wilderness of love, disconnected, and untethered to the brutal realities of the new age “real world.”
It was Thoreau who advised that we should go for a walk in the wilderness as though “we may never return”—which is to say, being perfectly content with getting completely (insert choice of swear word here) lost—so that the clarity of our flaming hearts may come back in a much more purer form than they were before we got lost to begin with.
See, when we are lost, we have to forsake our control over things out of necessity, all the while giving in to our wild nature by saying, “Here I am, now guide me through the maze of my own shit and funnel me the hell out of here."
In that moment there’s a pretty solid chance that you’ll meet up with a little friend of yours, who often only shows up when one has completely let their guard down.
This friend means no harm whatsoever, but most folks have a knack for walking the other way from him when they’re too damn focused on the end results, of timely tasks—even the tiny ones; like trying to find a way out based on which way the damn map attached to our ass tells us to go.
Who is this friend, you might be asking?
Well, to put it frankly, it’s the truth that we aren't going to live forever. It's the truth that time moves swift, so I like slow things down by writing this shit.
It's also the truth of things you’ve done that catch up to you. Like the food you ate the night before that's making you walk a little faster now. It's to quit high stepping around the things you’re really good at that you never give yourself enough credit for, or the truth of the changes you've made in your life but aren't quite comfortable with yet, all the while not worrying endlessly about all the things that you royally screwed up before.
It is damn near impossible to walk purely in that moment of truth, without the bother of what turn to take, or how things might end up, and not encounter the simple truth.
But the truth always comes unsought, albeit sans surly attitude. And the truth is nothing more than a traveling companion of thoughts, trampled underfoot to the sound of crunching leaves. And his name is reality.
Walking hand in hand with the reality that we are going to die one day is a lot less scary and stressful than trying to escape it. But at some point we have to meet up with the reality of the truth in spite of ourselves, and say what we have to say before taking a hike up to the great unknown in the sky.
To get lost sometimes, is to take the scenic route straight through all the difficult parts, to make that formal decision to face things like fear, self-doubt, and most importantly, remembering what its like living in the moment.
And I—like most everyone I think—am the type that doesn’t always end up back at the official starting point of the journey, where it all began.
But I can and I will find my way back to where I am meant to be, and wherever it is I end up, and you will too, that my friend is a bona fide guarantee.
So go. Hit the road. Leave your phone behind.
Take a hike. Get lost for a few.
As much as possible.
Because if you get lost in the wilderness enough times with that little unseen friend of yours, only to find your way to where you belong based on your gut instinct, you’ll become an ace navigator in all other arenas of life.
Perhaps even a veritable version of your truest self.
But for now, if you’ll please excuse me for the time being, I finally found the restroom. .
Til the next time.
Yours Truly
Ryan Love
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