I want to live in the woods
On nature's healing faculty
I have been thinking about motivation lately. Why do I want to create A Good Spot, an endeavor that means a lot of work? And, let’s admit it, why at this middle-to-later stage in life? Thanks to the book, Life is in the Transitions, I don’t believe in the midlife crisis, though it never did seem like a plausible thing.
If I were the type of person who was completely pragmatic, I’d realized that I could leverage my desire to think about motivation from being a problem into an opportunity to write a purpose statement.1 That is, if I were the type of person who subscribed to the point of view that business goals were the most important goals to stay focused on.
Instead I’m going to say, “Having a question to ponder about is something to be embraced rather than forced into becoming something else just because someone else says so, and I’d rather puzzle over the problem for a while to see what might be learned about oneself and even possibly the human condition.” Wait, did I just turn it into an opportunity?
Let’s get on with it. Why? Why is this endeavor so appealing?
There are many reasons. Here’s one.
I want to live in or practically in the woods. That’s a conclusion to which I have been led by faithfully walking a dog, and thinking back over my life, and paying attention to when I felt peace and calm, and being honest with myself about the ego’s role in life choices, and considering what I need. My conclusion: I may very well need to live in or very near the woods.
In the last few years, I have made a deliberate effort to go for a long walk with Ande every morning, weather permitting, and a short one in the evening. I had to make that a deliberate choice because my job had come to dominate my waking hours. I used to believe, consciously or not, that waking hours were working hours. In other words, if I was awake, I should check my email, see if there’s anything that needs my immediate attention, think about it over breakfast, answer the emails, and then spend the rest of the day, the entire day, working. COVID-19 added daily Zoom meetings for too many weeks. I had no right, I thought, to take the time not to think about work-related things. This had seemed normal for many years but circumstances change and what once seemed normal can suddenly seem strange and alien. Did the daily Zoom meetings suddenly make the number of hours I and my computer were staring at each other appear ridiculous? I think so and therefore I try to be grateful for that change.
In hindsight I wonder if describing my situation as thinking about work all day every day is an exaggeration. But I do remember how I felt then, in the middle of it, and I know it felt like drowning or suffocating and as if I was not alive but going through the motions like the zombies in Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” who wanted to be at the mall but couldn’t remember why.2
There are decent parks near me and Ande always wants to go for a longer walk than a shorter one and I knew that being among trees always, always makes me feel safe. Is it because I grew up on a rural road with woods on one side of the house and farms on the other? In my youth, I would cross-country ski on the snowmobile trail that ran through those woods and to get to the trail I’d have to cut my own trail through the loose snow. My dog,3 naturally, would accompany me on my little ski trips. He would follow me through the loose snow sometimes stepping on the backs of my skis. On the snowmobile trail, however, we could both enjoy the packed snow and go at our top speeds and savor the beauty and wisdom of the trees and the smells of winter (one of us more than the other).
For the last few years, I’ve made a steady effort to accompany Ande on long walks every day and to think about her and me while walking. It’s not as easy as it sounds. The mind gets into ruts and wants to go back to its familiar thought-patterns. Reading Comfort Crisis (more accurately, listening to it as an audio book) confirmed for me what I had felt to be true since childhood: being in nature rewires your brain, in a good way, in the way that human brains have been wired for eons. (So, make a mental note, reading books that have nothing to do with work is also an important step toward healthier living.) Comfort Crisis recommends scaling up one’s immersion in nature — from walking every week to spending half a day and then to a three days in the wild.4 Trees can teach us how to come back to ourselves.
I learned to concentrate on Ande’s gait and to match it. To wait patiently while she sniffed and to look around at the trees. To listen to birds’ chatter.5 To follow her lead. And she led me to the Path of Four Bridges. She leads me to the Path of Four Bridges nearly every day.
Now, when I daydream and my mind wanders, it is walking the perimeter of A Good Spot with my pack of rescued dogs along a trail I keep simply groomed, winter, spring, summer, and fall, to witness nature share its marvel (and to look for places where the fence may need mending, because there is always some work to do).
A purpose statement is not to be confused with a vision statement or a mission statement, as the mighty Forbes explains here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2020/03/04/vision-mission-and-purpose-the-difference/?sh=5d7b95e5280e.
Statements of purpose, vision, and mission all have their place and I intend to write such things, but not today.
Of course that’s not the only instance when zombies show us that we can be both dead and alive, going through motions, drawn to familiar objects and places without knowing why, but I think it’s the movie that made it the most obvious.
The dog’s name was Spiunce and that’s a story for another time.
Here’s a blog of someone who explains Comfort Crisis’s 3-day effect on his life: https://www.thezag.com/3-day-effect/, if you want to see a detailed example. Or, you know, read the book.
I began using the Merlin app from Cornell Ornithology, which I discovered thanks to another substack writer, the writer of A Big Yard.