Contemplative Hiking

Last week I received an e-mail from the Continental Divide Trail Alliance, the nonprofit formed in 1995 to construct the Continental Divide trail, with the sad announcement that they are ceasing operations. Their Board of Directors had to make this difficult decision due to “increasing pressures from development in the West, rising land costs, and challenges with the longstanding down cycle in the economy”.

The Continental Divide Trail is a hiking trail that stretches all the way from Mexico to Canada along the Continental Divide, and in Colorado it traverses the backbone of the Rocky Mountains. As of 2011, 2,268 miles of Trail have been completed, and volunteers were responsible for 525 of those miles, and to date 832 miles remain to be constructed.

The CDTA was a long-time graphic design client of mine. From 2001 to 2010, I designed their quarterly newsletters, event flyers and posters. I was proud to have contributed to the success of their campaign in this small way, because I believe that the completion of the trail is not just good for state tourism and mountain economies, but for providing low-impact ways of re-connecting people with nature and wilderness. This is important to the future of our planet. The news that they’re closing their doors was not just a shock, but pained me to think that this project may never be completed. I certainly hope that I’m wrong about that.

How many hikers have experienced moments of wonder, transcendence and revelation on the Continental Divide trail? How many families came to volunteer through the last 15 years to swing a pick and shovel dirt and be a part of this legacy? What kind of impression did that make on kids, and how were their lives affected forever? How invaluable are these experiences to future generations?

We need more nature in our lives, and low-impact access to wilderness such as the CDT, the Colorado Trail or the Appalachian Trail, not only provides this kind of access to anyone of virtually any background, education and income level, but helps stimulate local and state economies with tourism. People come to Colorado from all over the world to hike these trails in the summer. It helps mountain towns maintain a decent economy in the summer, when ski resorts are closed. Being able to experience the peace and beauty of wilderness on a well-maintained and relatively safe trail with others is something we may have been taking for granted during the economic boom of the later part of the last century. When the economy takes a downturn, as it has in the last several years, everything but the most critical of services and support systems gets underfunded or neglected.

In the current worldview, access to nature is not seen as a “critical” service. As things get progressively more uncertain, it seems that jobs and money take precedence over beauty, human health, ecological health and sometimes even common sense.

About the same time I heard of the demise of the CDTA, I read that oil and gas companies were gearing up for more fracking operations along the Front Range—this time in a couple of state parks. I have already witnessed more oil and gas operations setting up shop in Dacono, Erie, Commerce City and Broomfield. Energy is something that is almost never in soft demand and as we fall on the downward slope of the peak oil parabola, we are becoming more and more desperate to eke out anything we can, anywhere we can find it. Nothing is sacred anymore. Drilling near suburban neighborhoods, schools and playgrounds? Sure, why not? We need the jobs, and the gas. Setting up a rig in state parks and maybe even National Parks? Well, where else are we to find new pockets of energy?

These operations are not just unsightly and polluting, they are a disturbance to the wildlife and human residents. A Denver Post commentary from October, 2011 sums it up nicely: there are things that are priceless that are worth protecting for future generations. Clean air, clean water, quality of life.

If I extrapolate the future based on what I’m seeing today, I will predict that in ten or twenty years we will have less nature and more oil and gas rigs. We will have sold out our precious, irreplaceable resources for a quick buck and in the end, we will not have avoided economic and societal collapse, we will have just postponed it a few months or years. We will have less and less unspoiled stretches of wilderness and more cancer, more poverty and more despair. This is the future, unless we all commit to educating ourselves and doing some deep soul-searching.

By Carolyn Baker, PhD.

Original article can be found on Carolyn Baker’s website at CarolynBaker.net.

NOTE TO READER: Carolyn and I will be co-facilitating two workshops in Denver, CO on the 3 Keys to Resilience in Uncertain Times. If you’d like to meet others and discuss your thoughts and anxieties about what’s happening with the world’s economy and environment, and learn ways to cope emotionally and spiritually, please join us February 4th and March 10th. For more information or to register click here or email me at magsemerson@yahoo.com.

While mainstream media has been encouraging collective dithering over a possible U.S. government shutdown, the chilling realities of off-the-chart levels of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, escalating upheavals throughout the Middle East, and surging oil prices have been simmering in the background, remaining the lethal environmental, geopolitical, and economic time bombs that they are. Weeks ago, I was well aware that a government shutdown was highly unlikely but would be used to distract our attention from more urgent matters, and thus, I reported only one story about it in my Daily News Digest.

I recently returned from Northern California where residents there were profoundly anxious regarding the effects of radiation on the West Coast from Fukushima. How not, when on April 1, the San Francisco area newspaper, Bay Citizen, reported that “Radiation from Japan rained on Berkeley during recent storms at levels that exceeded drinking water standards by 181 times and has been detected in multiple milk samples, but the U.S. government has still not published any official data on nuclear fallout here from the Fukushima disaster”?

In typical American media fashion, out of sight, out of mind. Fewer and fewer stories of radiation realities in and issuing from Japan are being reported. An occasional comment surfaces, usually assuring us that we have nothing to fear. It’s all so benign. Apparently, we can now move on to “really important” stories like Obama’s 2012 campaign and the royal wedding.

And yet, whether explicitly stated or not, Americans and billions of other individuals throughout the world, are not only terrified about radiation but about their economic future—an economic future which will be inexorably more ruinous as a result of the Japan tragedy and its economic ripples globally. By that I do not mean that they feel mild anxiety about embellishing their stock portfolios, but rather, are feeling frightened about how they are going to feed their families, where they will live after losing their house in foreclosure, where they might find employment in a world where having a full-time job is becoming increasingly rare, how they will access healthcare without insurance or the money to pay out of pocket, or how they will make ends meet in forced or voluntary retirement.

Obviously, these anxieties are relevant to the world’s middle classes and not to teeming masses of human beings living on two dollars per day or less. Ironically, however, it is frequently the case that for all the suffering of abjectly impoverished human beings, they have seldom known any other standard of living and have learned how to survive on virtually nothing. They hear no reports of nuclear meltdowns, and even if they did, such news would seem insignificant in the face of needing to secure food or water for today—a type of existence that contains its own traumas and yields dramatically short lifespans.

Having inhabited a middle class existence, one can only comfort oneself for so long by reflecting on the plight of the destitute in far off places. One’s immediate reality is an anomalous deprivation, a stark loss of the familiar, and the looming reality that things will not get better, but only worse, and that these losses are unpredictably punctuated with frightening events such as extreme weather, natural disasters, nuclear meltdowns, or the terrifying consequences of rotting infrastructure such as pipeline explosions or collapsing bridges. These realities take their toll on the body—sleepless nights, a weakened immune system, moodiness, anger, depression, despair, and often, suicidal thinking. Whether the trauma is dramatic and frequent such as a 9.0 earthquake in Japan followed by high intensity aftershocks, or whether it slowly grinds on amid a disquieting sense of the permanent loss of so much that one held dear, the landscapes of countless lives are forever, painfully altered, emotionally littered with charred shells of once exuberant and robust routines.

Yes YOU Have Been Traumatized

But, you may argue, I haven’t been traumatized. My life is amazingly normal. I’m weathering the collapse of industrial civilization reasonably well and feel profoundly grateful.

Indeed I celebrate your good fortune, but I must add that no inhabitant of industrial civilization is without trauma because that paradigm is by definition, traumatizing.

It is only when you understand the extent to which you have been traumatized outside of your awareness that you can effectively prepare for and yes, welcome, the demise of empire and its ghastly assaults on your soul and the earth community.

In the face of extreme weather events and earth changes, skyrocketing food and energy prices, increasingly dramatic expressions of civil unrest globally, massive unemployment, global economic evisceration of the middle classes, and the proliferation of toxins worldwide—whether from fracking in Pennsylvania or leaking reactors in Japan, we are all in varying states of emotional breakdown and breakthrough. The sands are shifting under the feet of all human beings on this planet. Nothing is as it seems. “Things fall apart,” said William Butler Yeats, “the center cannot hold.”

Call it whatever you like—collapse, Transition, Great Turning. Put a happy face on it or a terrified one, but regardless of how you spin it, regardless of how much you want to feel good about it—and there is much to feel good about, the changes are dizzying, sometimes delightful, sometimes devastating. Yes, it’s an exciting time to be alive, and it’s an excruciating time to be alive. Sometimes one feels schizophrenic, sometimes bipolar. But all of that, yes all of that, is traumatizing to the human nervous system, and if we don’t recognize that, we’re probably hiding out in the “Hurt Locker” of empire.

So how do we not hide out? How do we face our trauma, begin healing it, and protect ourselves as much as humanly possible from further wounding, particularly as life becomes even more traumatic?

The Transition movement has provided us with a treasure-trove of resources for cultivating logistical resilience in our communities through awareness-raising, reskilling, and creating self-sufficient and sustainable communities. Anyone not involved in this kind of logistical preparation is only half-awake, yet many individuals believe that no other preparation is necessary. Might that not, in fact, be one characteristic of trauma? Just as the PTSD-scarred combat veteran insists that all he needs is another good battle to make him feel better, it may be that the hunger for one more gold or silver coin, one more case of freeze-dried food, one more bucket of barley, one more permaculture class, one more emergency response training is yet another means of avoiding the emotional healing and preparation work every human being needs to do in order to navigate the accelerating unraveling of the world as we have known it.

A Few Ways Of Developing Emotional Resilience

1)     Understand that industrial civilization is inherently traumatizing. Make a list of the ways it has wounded you and those you care about.

2)     If you are involved with a Transition initiative, start or join a heart and soul group where the psychology of change (see The Transition Handbook) can be discussed in depth and group members can share feelings about the acceleration of collapse as well as share how they are preparing for it emotionally.

3)     Become familiar with your emotional repertoire and how you deal with your emotions—or not. Imagine the kinds of emotions that you and others are likely to feel in an unraveling world. How do you imagine yourself dealing with those emotions? How would you prefer to deal with them?

4)     Think about how you need to take care of yourself right now in an increasingly stressful world. What stresses do you need to pull back from? What self-nurturing activities do you need to increase?

5)     Who is your support system? If you do not have people in your life with whom you can discuss the present and coming chaos, you are doubly stressed. Find people with whom you can talk about this on a regular basis.

6)     What are you doing to create joy in your life? Do you have places in your life where you can have fun without spending money or without talking about preparation for the future?

7)     What are you doing to create beauty? Life may become uglier on many levels, including the physical environment. How can you infuse more beauty into the world? Use art, music, poetry, dance, theater, storytelling and other media to enhance the beauty of your community and your immediate environment.

8)     Consider creating a regular poetry reading salon in which people come together perhaps monthly to share poems or stories which express the full range of human emotions. Many communities have found poetry sharing events to be incredibly rich venues for deepening connections and their own emotional resilience.

9)     Spend as much time as possible in nature. Read books and articles on ecopsychology and take contemplative walks or hikes in which you intentionally engage in dialog with nature.

10) Engage at least twice a day in some kind of mindfulness practice such as meditation, inner listening, journaling, guided visualization. Still another tool for mindfulness and community deepening is sacred earth-based rituals which can be done individually or shared in a group.

It is important to remember that challenging experiences are not necessarily traumatizing experiences. The collapse of industrial civilization will be challenging for those who have been preparing for it; for those who haven’t, it will constitute massive trauma. The less attached we are to living life as we have known it, and the more open and resilient we are—the more we are utilizing the myriad tools that exist for preparing our emotions, our bodies, and our souls for collapse, the more capacity we create for navigating a formidable future.

All of the above suggestions are related to releasing stress from the mind and body. As the external stresses of an unraveling civilization accumulate, we all need ways for letting go of them. My friend, Jerry Allen, of Transition Sebastopol, California who is also a Marriage and Family Therapist, recently penned an article entitled “The Importance of Effectively Discharging Accumulated Stress As Our World Moves Into Crisis,” in which he states:

Learning to effectively release accumulated stress is not some peripheral process that is needed primarily to treat returning soldiers and victims of abuse, as important as that treatment is. Learning to let go of accumulated stress and discharge new stresses is a vital skill for all of us who are preparing ourselves to face the unknown future. It is as important as doing physical emergency preparations. We have witnessed the chaos, rage and panic that can grip communities when devastating changes happen. When panic hits as someone yells “fire” in a crowded theatre, other voices need to be ready to stand aside and start singing loudly to calm the people and re-direct their energies.  Such work has saved hundreds of people from trampling deaths in panicked crowds. If we are still too activated by our own build up of trauma, we will not be in a position to discharge fast and take quick decisive community initiative.

As we prepare to serve in a helping role among many, it makes sense to train a vibrant cadre of our community members on how to cultivate body awareness, let go of stress fast, remobilize our adaptive capacity and be ready for action. It also makes sense to explore and adapt the use of story, song, dance, ritual and whatever works to help our communities come together, heal together and strengthen our joint body for action.

My just-published book Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition is chock full of re-usable tools for creating and maintaining vibrant emotional resilience. It is also ideal for use in Transition heart and soul or study groups focused on creating emotional resilience.

I do not assume that a world of increasing crises will be a world devoid of cooperation or community building. In her brilliant 2009 book, A Paradise Built In Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster, Rebecca Solnit notes that in most natural disasters, human beings, in most cases, unite in a spirit of cooperation to support each other. While I certainly concur and reviewed Solnit’s book in an article entitled, “Disaster: The Gift That Keeps On Giving,” I am also well aware that cooperation is not the only response to trauma. Furthermore, the collapse of industrial civilization is most likely to play out in an irregular, “lumpy” fashion in different locations at different times. How it plays out and over what period of time will dictate how humans respond. One thing is certain: Responses will not always be benevolent, caring, and cooperative.

Thus we must prepare for a very uncertain future by consciously cultivating emotional resilience. This involves addressing the myriad ways in which we have been traumatized by the current paradigm and training with intention for encountering situations in the future which may be even more emotionally challenging in a world unraveling.

Carolyn was a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years and a professor of psychology and history for 10. She is the author of several books, including Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition (2011) and Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse (2009). She manages her website, Speaking Truth to Power at www.carolynbaker.net. Carolyn publishes the Daily News Digest which is a collection of independent news stories focusing on unprecedented transitions and options for navigating an uncertain future. She also writes a regular column entitled Collapsing Consciously for Mike Ruppert’s website, Collapsenet. Carolyn tells stories with an African drum and leads workshops on Navigating The Coming Chaos and on Relationships In The Long Emergency. She has a Transition coaching and spiritual direction practice locally in Boulder, Colorado and by phone or Skype worldwide for people who want help with dealing with the unprecedented challenges of our time.

Written by guest blogger, Darren Johnson.

Darren Johnson is the author of Taking a Walk on the Wild Side, a blog born out of his personal love of nature and his desire to help youth and adults improve their lives through higher self-esteem, good decision making and strengthening family bonds by building a relationship with nature.  He spends as much time as possible in nature activities such as hiking, photography, food plot and habitat development, and other conservation projects.  Darren believes that an active relationship with nature is one of the best things a person can do to reduce stress while improving their overall health and happiness.

As I slowly moved through the dark field toward the forest, I heard the sound of running in the woods ahead.  I stopped to listen, expecting that it was just a deer I had spooked in my pre-dawn clumsiness.  Instead, what I heard chilled me to my core.  The running got more intense, as if more than one animal was making the sound.  This was followed immediately by sounds of a desperate struggle as if an animal was rolling around on the forest floor fighting to get up.  Then something similar to a loud guttural scream pierced the air, followed by a short silence, then the sound of something large being drug across the forest floor.

I froze, totally consumed with fear.  I hadn’t ever heard any sound like this before.  My heart was telling me to turn and run to the safety of the truck but my body was froze motionless.  I remember trying to be quiet but at the same time feeling like I was gasping for air.  I slowly turned to look at my hunting partner to see if he had also heard it.  I was hoping that somehow, I had imagined the whole incident but the look in his eyes told me otherwise.

By now, the forest was silent again as we stood in the field desperately trying to figure out what to do.  My mind raced to try to rationalize the sound as something mundane and not dangerous.  Try as I might, I kept coming back to the same conclusion, that we had heard a mountain lion bring down a deer on that pre-dawn morning.

Fear to a reasonable degree is a good thing.  It is part of our internal defense system that works  to prevent us from making poor decisions or getting caught up in dangerous situations.  Fear is a good thing as long as we don’t let it dominate our thought processes and actions.  Simply put, fear is one component of our internal risk management system where unconsciously, we assess the potential reward compared to the potential risk before taking action.

For much of my life, I have been exploring the fields, woods and waterways.  That means that I have spent more than my share of time outside in dark conditions.  I inherently have come to grips with most of the risks and subconsciously deal with them rather than fear them.  These include minor things such as tripping over logs I can’t see, sliding down hillsides or falling into creeks.  It could even include more significant risks such as coming in contact with venomous snakes or other predators.

By nature, I am a very analytical person (my wife would even say over-analytical and after intense analysis, I would have to say that she’s right) but on that fateful day, my analytical side abandoned me and my emotional side took over.  Perhaps it was the magnitude of the sound in an otherwise silent forest, maybe it was the darkness or just the fear of the unknown.  Maybe it was the combination of many factors but regardless of what caused it, fear consumed me for the moment.

This type of fear can be seen all around us on an almost daily basis.  The media tries to create fear to gain audiences for their product.  Living in Indiana, I am amazed how the local media tries to make every 1 to 4 inch snowstorm seem like a natural disaster.  It works though, as TV weather forecast ratings go up and stores sell out of milk and bread in anticipation of the “white death” that is coming.

Parents try to create this fear within their children by making exaggerated claims like “if you don’t do well in school, you won’t make it into college and be able to get a good job so you’ll end up homeless!”  Stores try to scare us into buying the latest fad or trendy product by saying things like, “Get yours now before we’re sold out and they’re gone forever!”

The media also over blows the coverage of deadly human interaction with predators.  A single encounter makes the news for weeks while the multitude of murders, rapes and other abuses in our cities hardly makes the news at all.  Again, it is the media trying to create an emotional attachment to the story so that their audience expands, a “fear factor” so to speak.

If we stop to think about any of these situations for just a moment, it doesn’t take us long to determine that the majority of the time, there is no real reason for fear.  There is reason to prepare, and be cautious, but fear in these cases is nothing more than an impediment to achieving our goal.

It is the same with encountering predators in the wild.  If you spend any length of time whatsoever in the wild, you will come in contact with predators.  Most of the time, you won’t even be aware of this contact as the predator avoids you and all is good.  Some times, you might see the predator as they are fleeing, which again presents no real danger to you.  Only occasionally, a statistically insignificant portion of the time, does this situation present any potential for danger to you.  For those few times where an adversarial meeting between you and the predator might happen, keeping a cool head and logically responding can mitigate any danger to you.  Knowing the behaviors of each predator and how best to respond is more productive than fear ever will be.  Dealing with this situation logically rather than emotionally puts you back in control of the situation and allows you to enjoy your outdoor activity.

To put it in perspective, think of the thousands of bears, mountain lions and wolves in the U.S. today.  Next, think of the thousands of hikers, hunters, fishers and picnickers who hit the trails every day.  The combination of people and predators being in the same general locale at the same time presents the possibility of many encounters each day.  Yet when you count the actual number of fatal encounters with all of these predators combined in any given year, you can count them on your fingers.  A handful of instances spread over thousands (maybe millions) of interactions make the fear of predators unfounded.

While we can mathematically prove there is not a significant risk of a deadly encounter with a predator, we do know that this fear exists in some people and must be dealt with.  First and foremost is to acknowledge the fear and don’t try to deny it.  Understand the statistical magnitude of the risk or in other words, realize how little at risk you actually are.  Realize that the fear might not be as rational or justified as you originally thought it was.  I believe the next step is to refuse to be defeated by the fear and decide to productively manage it.  Then you can prepare by educating yourself on how to best deal with the potential threat.  Knowing what to do, if the situation ever arises, will empower you to be able to enjoy your connection with nature to the fullest.

To illustrate the power of emotion and fear working together, let’s look at this question.  For your children’s sake, which you should be more fearful of, a gun kept in a house with children (with ammunition present also) or the same house with children and a swimming pool?  From an emotional standpoint, most everyone including myself, would initially be more fearful of the house with the gun.  I own several guns but it just feels more dangerous than a swimming pool, which elicits thoughts of summertime fun.  The statistics in the U.S., however, prove otherwise.  Household swimming pools cause about one child drowning death for every 11,000 households with pools.  Considering there are about 6 million pools, this means that on average 550 children die each year.  Child gun deaths currently average about one for every one million households with guns.  While there about 200 million guns estimated to be stored in households, this results in about 175 child deaths each year due to a gun kept in the house.  So which has reason to be more fearful, guns or swimming pools?  Clearly it is swimming pools with approximately one death for every 11,000 households compared to guns with one death for every 1 million households.  In fact, swimming pools are about 90 times more likely to cause a child’s death than a gun but I bet you haven’t seen anyone on the news promoting a “turn in your swimming pool” program, have you?

Can guns in a household result in a dangerous situation?  Absolutely, but the vast majority of gun owners are responsible people who use caution, education and logic to effectively manage the risk rather than fear.  Can bears and mountain lions harm you?  Absolutely, but you can effectively manage this risk also by means other than fearful avoidance of nature.

So, how did I deal with my “mountain lion” encounter that day years ago?  After calming myself down, I came up with three possible scenarios.  First, we had totally misunderstood the sounds and it was not what we thought (I didn’t believe it, but it’s possible).  Second, we had interpreted the sounds correctly, but it was another predator, likely the much more common and smaller bobcat.  Third, it had been a mountain lion but it now had a full stomach and that meant it was not on the prowl for more food.  I don’t know which of the three is correct, but they all meant the same thing.  It was safe to continue our expedition, which we enjoyed very much without any mountain lion sightings that day.

While you should definitely recognize your fears, you should work to manage them rather than be controlled by them.  Now go live your life, not your nightmare!

There are times when all of us, at some point, experience a mild bout of “the blues.” Either it’s circumstantial —there is something worrisome going on in our life— or it’s just the normal ebb and flow of mood. If you’re a woman, it can be hormonal or it can be the result of poor sleep or nutrition. Even mild depression can be downright painful. You feel the ache of listlessness and hopelessness, even when you know logically your life is generally good and comfortable. That’s when it’s especially bad, perhaps because you can’t even find a good reason why you’re feeling down. If there was something you could fix, you’d fix it. Instead, you’re just not happy and you’re not sure why.

I have observed throughout my life that certain activities make me feel better and even cure me of the occasional blues.  One of the activities that seem to be most reliable in making me feel better instantly is exercising outside in a nature place, preferably alone. The mental health benefits of this are not just anecdotal, there are studies that point to the idea that exercising in an outdoor, natural setting is far more effective in improving mood than exercising indoors.

The reason I recommend exercising alone in nature to cure blues is that it’s contemplative, meaning that it allows your mind to wander to how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking—in the moment, as it relates to your environment. You need not worry about what another person is experiencing, how fast they’re walking, or what they think of what you’re telling them. Solitary, contemplative time in nature, allows you to be as present in the moment as you possibly can be, and affords you the space to work through problems and emotions. I have had many instances of creative insight and even a surge of ideas and motivation during solitary hikes, but not so much when I’ve been with others. Maybe the conversation always gets in the way, or maybe my mind is better at surging creativity when I’m giving it the space to do so.

Studies have also concluded that vigorous exercise in bright light (such as sunlight) increases mental well-being by increasing seratonin levels in the brain. These chemicals give us a “feel good” boost, and as an exercise enthusiast will tell you, there’s nothing like a good workout to put you in a great mood all day. Combining vigorous exercise with time outdoors in nature is the ultimate natural remedy for a mild cause of the blues.

This is a particularly important point for seasonal depression, or the “winter blues.” When it’s cold and blustery outside, the last thing we want to do is go out there to exercise, but this is precisely when it’s most beneficial, especially on sunny days. Where I live near Denver, Colorado, I am no more than a 30 minute drive from beautiful hiking trails that meander through pine forests and rock formations. Even in winter, after a snowfall, so many people hike that the trails are snow-packed and completely walkable.

In modern culture we spend so much of our time indoors, in front of one screen or another (a computer, a television, a smartphone), and this is doing nothing for our emotional, physical or spiritual health. We need to connect – to our bodies, our spirit, other beings, nature—in order to experience the totality of who we are and our place on earth. Nature has already provided us with the means to being and feeling healthy and happy, we just need to rediscover those gifts.

Are there places near where you live or work that you can exercise in a natural setting? If so, set aside at least three days this week to doing so: to greet the day with a sunrise jog, to contemplate the day with a walk at sunset, and to cap the workweek with a long and physically invigorating amble among the trees, birds and open sky.

The cover story in the December, 2011 issue of Outside Magazine is about marine biologist’s Wallace J. Nichols “touchy-feely” theory that if we could “understand what really happens to us in the presence of the ocean—which brain processes underlie our emotional reactions—it could bring about a radical shift in conservation efforts.”

Nichols has been observing what happens to people’s demeanor when they enter the gigantic and spectacular coral reef tank in California’s Academy of Sciences in San Francisco where he works, as well as what happens to the attitudes of people who spend time in the vast wilderness of the ocean, such as surfers and fisherman. He’s concluded – anecdotally – that spending time in or near the ocean has a calming effect on the mind and body, akin to meditation or a spiritual experience. It also creates a desire to conserve and protect in those who have a direct relationship with the ocean.

Nichols is so excited about this concept he has even launched a campaign to create a field of study called neuro-conservationism, because he believes that if we knew exactly why we love the ocean (or any kind of wilderness for that matter) we could create a new tool to protect it. In other words, if we could have empirical evidence that the human mind needs nature for optimum wellbeing, we could make headway in the environmental movement.

I agree with Nichols and many others that the guilt, blame and shame of the environmental movement in the last 50 years isn’t working. While reading dire statistics about the extinction of species or the pollution of air and water worldwide may cause us brief panic or concern, it doesn’t necessarily work to change our long-term patterns of thinking or behavior. There’s a very simple reason for this – we can’t truly care about something with which we have no direct relationship. It just becomes another problem “out there” that hopefully someone will solve. But for now, we think, we have to figure out how to pay the bills and fix the car.

Since the Agricultural Revolution 5,000 years ago and more recently since Industrial Revolution, there has been a shift in how most human beings relate to their environment. Instead of  living in harmony with nature, out of necessity and out of a spiritual impulse, we look to nature as a resource and something to be exploited. That river is no longer a sacred thing that provides life to everything around it, it is something to be controlled and dammed and put to use so we can have electricity and water inside our homes. That mountain is no longer a majestic testament to something greater and older than ourselves, but a pile of minerals and coal to be extracted and plundered so that we can make gadgets and products and “service the economy”.

We’ve literally moved away from depending on the land we’ve inhabited to living inside boxes all day long: houses, cars, cubicles, living rooms, and the virtual “boxes” of televisions and computers. We have separated ourselves from that which sustains us so much that many of us don’t know where our drinking water comes from, where our food comes from, and lack the visceral knowledge that everything is connected to everything else. Therefore, how can we know that our very survival depends on the health and vitality of every ecological system on Earth? We think it depends on a job, or the economy, or the grocery store down the street.

Under these circumstances, is it any wonder that our eyes glaze over when we hear about how the world’s oceans are dying? Or that the rate of extinction of species is accelerating at such an alarming pace due to climate change, pollution and human encroachment on habitat?

If you lived on a piece of land that provided for your every need, from food, drinking water, heat and shelter (wood) and even your spirituality, you sure as heck would care about whether or not someone was dumping toxic chemicals downstream of your river or shooting all the predatory birds and mammals for recreation. You’d lay your life down to protect the place where you live, because you would know how important a healthy ecosystem was to your wellbeing and the wellbeing of your children’s children. But in the paradigm of modern society, we are taught that all we need is money, and that as long as we have a healthy economy everything else can be fixed, developed, or sacrificed to the deity of “progress.”

Of course we’re wrong, but we don’t know it, because we have no direct relationship anymore to the land.

What Nichols is realizing, and what ecopsychologists have been saying since the 90s, is that unless we develop a new relationship with nature, we will not have the will or the passion deep in our heart and soul to change anything. Studies have shown that persons who can relate to nature, or spend a lot of time in nature, may realize the connection to their environment better than those who do not, and consequently are more apt to give more attention and credence to issues such as the need for conservation and sustainability.

“…people high in environmental identity accord more weight than people low in environmental identity to those principles that endow environmental entities with moral standing. That EID score was also related to an increased rating for a fourth principle, ‘managing natural resources for the public good’…” (Susan Clayton, Environmental Identity, pg 57)

So yes, Mr. Nichols, it is true that people who develop a relationship to the ocean are more likely to care about conservation of the ocean. For that matter, the same holds true for those who develop a relationship to mountains, prairies, forests, and all the plants and animals that reside there. I don’t think we need more empirical data or neurological studies to make the case that we are not and cannot live separate from the world around us. We already know that deep down in our gut, in that place that connects us to who we really are. We need a healthy environment, not just so we can thrive physically, but also so we can thrive emotionally and spiritually as well.

The new environmentalism consists of taking people outside, showing them what they have forgotten about the connectedness of all things, allowing them to see for themselves the beauty and serenity they’ve been missing. It is about getting people to fall in love with something—an animal, a mountain, a stream—and then allowing their hearts to make the conservation and protection of it a priority.

Al Gore’s documentary, “Inconvenient Truth” doesn’t start with a smack on the face statistic. It starts with a scene at a lake, under a tree, where Gore reminisces about how there was a special place he used to go when he was a kid, and how it made him feel, and how it’s shaped his priorities in life. I believe we all have that memory of a special place where the birds sang and the wind rustled through the trees. It’s time we reconnected with its source.

O'Fallon Trail, fall 2011

We’ve all experienced this, haven’t we? We look forward to getting outside all week, because work has been stressful or because we need some peace and quiet, or because we long to smell the freshness of the forest. But when we’re there on the trail, we are miserable because we can’t shut off negative thoughts. We worry about things back home. We berate ourselves for not being more in shape. We are anxious because we imagine a bear or a cougar is just around the corner, or we’re anxious about being alone in the wild. (For tips on dealing with those fears, read my article here).

How can you stop the negative thoughts while hiking, so you can actually enjoy being out in nature more?

I have a few tips that will help you get into the present moment and allow you to relax into what you’re doing. It may take lots of practice and using these tips over and over to begin to be more at ease and in tune with your surroundings, but like with all things that are worth doing, patience and perseverance is key.

Tip #1: Return to your favorite sense

One of the reasons I love going on hikes is for the silence and the sounds of nature. I love listening to the birds, the rustle of the wind through the trees, and the absence of traffic noise, machine noise (except for the occasional airplane), and media noise.

I tend to notice the sounds and the silence the most when I’m hiking – even more than how it smells, how it feels or what it looks like.

What’s your favorite sense on the trail? What do you find yourself noticing more when you’re hiking? Do you remark on the view? Inhale with pleasure the muskiness of the forest floor or the freshness of the wind? Appreciate the peacefulness?

Whenever you catch yourself lost in negative thoughts, return to your favorite sense. Listen to what’s happening around you. See something you haven’t noticed. Really sniff the air. Touch the bark of a tree. This is an easy way to return to the present moment.

Tip #2: Ask yourself, “Am I OK now?

A lot of the anxiety or negativity we feel has to do with something that occurred in the past or something we think will occur in the future.

The problem is, the present moment is all there is. The past is gone, the future hasn’t happened yet. We could spend our entire lives worrying about something that hasn’t yet happened, and in the end realize that our lives were generally quite pleasant or at the least, comfortable. We could pray, hope, dream about a time in the future when we’ll be the person we really want to be, but unless we are making strides today, we will never get there. All we have is the now. If we aren’t living our life the way we want now, we will not be living it the way we want in the future, which is a concept and not reality. All we have is the now.

Whatever it is that’s plaguing your thoughts, ask yourself, “Am I OK now?”

You’re breathing, you’re well enough to hike, you feel the wind in your hair and the sun on your face. Whatever you’re worried about hasn’t changed this fact about this moment. Chances are, outside of some thought about the past or future, you’ll realize you are perfectly OK now, and if you aren’t, you can make the choice to handle whatever physical discomfort is bogging you down.

Even that discomfort can be made worse (or better) by the story you tell yourself about it.

Tip #3: If you’re with someone, agree to stop talking

When we’re hiking with a friend, it’s often difficult to be fully present to what is. I often hike with friends and family, and these are not always silent hikes. We discuss our goals, gossip, talk about problems, politics, or just rehash the past. At the end of such a hike I realize that I can’t even recall parts of the trail, what it looked like, or how it felt to be there. All I remember was my opinion about the topic about which we were conversing.

These conversations can leave me feeling more pent up and stressed than I was BEFORE the hike, which isn’t good.

If you go hiking with someone, agree to stop talking at least halfway into it. That way, you can practice tip #1 and 2 without the distraction of conversation. It’ll be much easier to do this if you agree ahead of time, before you even start the hike. If you bring it up suddenly during the hike, it might feel insulting to your partner.

When I take groups on hikes through my MeetUp, the agreement that we are not going to talk or socialize is already in place. It allows everyone time and space to be with their own thoughts and experiences. But often people still tell me that they couldn’t stop the negative thoughts. Coming back to the present moment is a practice, not a remedy. You’ll have to keep doing it over and over again, just as in meditation when you return to the breath. In time, it’ll get easier, and you will be able to mostly stay present with what’s around you on the trail. At the very least, you’ll be able to make a choice about it.

After all, you don’t want to long for the woods when you’re at work or at home, and spend all your time thinking about work and home when you’re finally among the trees.

I will be signing copies of my book, “Contemplative Hiking Along the Colorado Front Range” at Jax Merchantile, Loveland, from 11 am to 1 pm on Saturday, November 12th.

Jax Merchantile’s Local Author Day is a lot of fun because authors of all kinds of outdoor recreation books, like books on flowers, hiking, skiing, etc. are in attendance and willing to talk about the subject matter on which they’re experts.

For more information, visit http://www.jaxmercantile.com/custom/AuthorDay/.

Our ego is our constant, drama-addicted and often irritating companion. Our ego tells us that we are better than other people or not as good as others. It tells us that we’re smarter than that guy down the hall in Marketing but a slacker and dumpy compared to that athletic bicyclist in the office next to ours. Our ego tells us that we aren’t doing enough to realize our goals and it tells us that we know more about health/politics/religion than our best friend.

We find it very difficult to separate ourselves from our ego, and therefore we feel exhilarated whenever information from an external source elevates our sense of self (“You did so well with that, I’m impressed!”) and devaluates it (“I’m not in love with you anymore.”), because we derive our emotions from our thoughts, and our thoughts are dominated by ego. Our mind cannot distinguish what is actually happening to us from what we think is happening.

In this way, we suffer needlessly. We tell ourselves stories about how this or that person is not respecting us. We convince ourselves that someone else is standing in the way of what we really want, and therefore we can’t truly be happy. We hold grudges and we feel anxious much of the time. Our blood pressure surges and our adrenal glands are pumping out fight-or-flight hormones in response to some perceived threat to our wellbeing.

And yet, this is all happening in our minds. Our bodies are just sitting there, staring at the computer screen or laying awake in bed at night. We are creating our own suffering.

We cannot live with the peaceful joy and sense of aliveness that is our birthright and natural state unless we recognize that who we are is not who our ego tells us we are. Our story—of what happened to us in the past or what we think will happen to us in the future—is not who we are.

So if you’re not your role or your story, who are you, really?

Are you a teacher? An engineer? A writer? A mother? Are you a bicyclist, Apple user,  intellectual, athlete, urban farmer, vegan, ominvore, conservative, liberal, progressive, peak oilist, naturalist, yuppie, or sports fan?

Do you have a high opinion of yourself or a low one? Are you a valuable person? Who are you without your identities and without your ego?

We are not who we think we are. We are the awareness of our identification with form. In the moment when we realize we are placing a label on ourselves and feeling a certain way about that label, we have brought awareness in between the thought (ego) and our identification with it. We are the space that separates us from the thought that tells us, “You are not enough” or “You are better than everyone else.”

We suffer because we feel inadequate in our roles and identifications. We didn’t get that promotion, we lost that client, our child came home with an F on their report card, we suspect our spouse is cheating on us, we aren’t making progress on that project or goal we’ve been obsessing about for the last several years.

In nature, consciousness and life are ego-less and have intrinsic value.

Here’s an activity in nature you can do on a hike or just out in your backyard, that will help you answer the question, “who am I?”

Activity:

Find a place to sit comfortably outside, where you can feel safe and where you can spend at least 30 minutes undisturbed.

Close your eyes and extend out your hand. How do you know that your hand is alive? How does it feel, inside of your body? Is there a buzzing, a vibration that tells you that your hand is alive, that you are alive?

Don’t think about the fact that your hand is alive. Don’t think, “I know my hand is alive because I can see it and I used it just now and there’s blood flowing through it.”

Don’t think, just FEEL. Feel the sensation of aliveness in your hand.

You are this sense of aliveness. You are not your thoughts, you are not your past, you are not your future. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are consciousness and life itself.

Now, open your eyes and look at a plant or some other living thing near you. Perhaps a tree, or a flower, or an insect. It’s best if you look at something you know very little about—perhaps an insect or plant you haven’t seen before.

Look at it without trying to identify or label it. You don’t need to know what it’s called or what it’s usefulness or function is.

You know nothing about this being. You don’t know what it thinks of itself or what it knows. You don’t know how long it’s been alive or who its mate is. You don’t know if it will die today or next year. You don’t know what diseases it may harbor.

Does this being have value, even without you knowing anything about it?

Why does it have value?

Why do you have value?

Who are you?

Isabel Lake, Brainard Lakes Recreation Area scores high on the payoff scale.

I’ve been considering categorizing hikes on a “Payoff Scale” – in other words, what is the payoff in terms of scenery, ambiance, beauty in relationship to the effort (elevation gain and distance)? I know that it’s not very “contemplative” to rate trails like this, but it sure is helpful in managing your time and energy when planning a hike.

The payoff scale would go from 1 to 10, with 1 being too high an effort for too low a payoff, and 10 being low effort for a high payoff. Most hikes are somewhere in between, with some effort expended to see a gorgeous view or experience beauty and solitude.

Lower Crater Lake, James Peak Wilderness

Yesterday I hiked up to the Crater Lakes. This is in the James Peak Wilderness area, near the Moffet Tunnel. It’s 3 miles up to the lower lake, with about a 1,000 foot elevation gain. I rate this hike a “3″ on the payoff scale, which is a low rating, because the last mile up to the lower lake is a grueling vertical climb up rocks that are like tall stairs. There are no great views along the way, with most of the hike in thick lodgepole and spruce. Most summer weekends there are a lot of other hikers along the way. Yesterday we counted around 75. There are some meadows and wet areas at the start of the hike, and wildflowers that are most abundant mid-summer, but all that is tempered by the booming noise of the tunnel ventilator fan, which drones on for a half an hour every so often, ruining your peace and quiet, especially within a half mile from the trailhead. The view at the lake shore is average in comparison to other alpine lake views, such as Loch Lake or Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain Park, or Lake Isabel in the Brainard Lake Recreation Area.

Here’s how I would rate some of my favorite hikes in the Front Range area, in terms of the payoff scale:

Isabel Lake – Brainard Lake Recreation Area: 8 (moderate effort with a big payoff view and lovely scenery along the way)

Loch Lake, RMNP: 8 (moderate effort with elevation gain, 3 miles to lake, incredible views, waterfalls and wildlife along the way)

Fraser Trail to Eldorado State Park, Eldorado Springs: 10 (low effort, short hike, wonderful scenery, especially in the canyon looking at the rock walls)

Goskawk Ridge Trail, Eldorado Springs: 7 (moderate effort, lots of variety of scenery and vegetation)

Ranger Trail or Gregory Canyon to the top of Green Mountain, Boulder: 6 (strenuous effort, 360 degree views at top, but not as scenic on the way up as other trails)

Sugarloaf Mountain, Boulder: 10 (only half hour or less to the top, with spectacular views all the way around, and in mid-summer some wildflowers along the way)

Mt. Evan Wilderness State Wildlife Area, Lost Lake or Captain Mountain Trail: 8

Deer Mountain, RMNP: 9 (the views along the way and at the top are worth the moderate effort up the hill)

How would you rate your favorite and not so favorite hikes along the Front Range on this “payoff scale”? Is there a hike with little to medium effort that has huge payoffs? Or one with a lot of effort and not much payoff? Share your experience in the comments section below.

Location: Clear Creek County, west of Evergreen, near the Mt. Evans Wilderness

Directions: From Denver, take I-70 west to Evergreen Pkwy. exit; go 6 miles south on HWY 74 to Evergreen Lake; turn right on Upper Bear Creek Rd. Go 6.5 miles to CR480 go right on CR480 for 3 miles.  Look for the signs for the Colorado State Wildlife Area. To access both the Lost Creek and Captain Mountain trailhead, drive past the gate on the narrow, unimproved dirt road another couple of miles.

Route: Take either the Lost Creek Trail No. 42 or the Captain Mountain Trail.

Access Notes: The road to the trailheads for Lost Creek and Captain Mountain trails is closed to vehicles September 1-June 14 and the State Wildlife Area is closed entirely to the public January 1-June 14. Four-wheel-drive, high-clearance vehicles are strongly recommended on the summer-access road past the first State Wildlife parking area. Dogs are allowed, but must be on a leash. There are pit toilets in the first parking lot, but none at the Lost Creek or Captain Mountain trailhead.

It’s a challenge to find a trail that is scenic, uncrowded and quiet on summer weekends, especially one that avoids the brunt of I-70 eastbound traffic from Silverton to Idaho Springs on a mid-afternoon return. My favorite summer alpine trails are Brainard Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, and almost anything west of the Continental Divide. While these trails are pleasant on weekdays, particularly early in the morning or late in the afternoon, they’re hard to access on weekends. Lack of adequate parking spoils Brainard Lake, and having to deal with tourist and I-70 traffic spoil the others.

The trails accessible from the Mt. Evans State Wildlife area, about 10 miles west of Evergreen Lake, seem to have a lot going for them: They’re about an hour and a half drive from Denver (about as far as Brainard and RMNP), they’re uncrowded, there aren’t any fees, they’re quiet, scenic and, at well above 9,000 feet, a cool respite from the heat of the city. There’s only one drawback, which is that unless you don’t care about your car’s suspension, or don’t care about adding another hour each way to your hike, you’ll need a 4WD, high-clearance vehicle to navigate the last two miles of road past the first parking lot to the Lost Creek/Captain Mountain trailhead.

We hiked a little of both the Lost Creek trail and Captain Mountain on August 28^th. Access to these trails ends after Labor Day, so it’s a short and sweet season for human activity in this beautiful and protected area.

The Lost Creek trail descends rapidly down from the trailhead and then follows Lost Creek for many miles. This time of year it’s a study in abundance. Because this area has gotten regular precipitation, the trail is dark, cakey mud and the vegetation often wraps and clings to your legs on the narrow path. Often the canopy from spruce and aspen is so thick that it creates a Handsel and Gretel ambiance where ripe, red berries of unknown toxicity beckon to be sampled and mushrooms of varying shapes and colors pop their tender heads out from the forest floor.

There were long sections of trail that were bordered by low-growing raspberry bushes, so it was a treat to have a few sweet ripe ones as we enjoyed the sound of the creek nearby. I didn’t eat too many, so that others on the trail could enjoy them as well, not to mention any animals that might be busy foraging in preparation for autumn. In fact, there were so many berries ripening on the trail I couldn’t help but wonder when I’d round the bend and encounter a black bear feasting on the delightful snacks.

One berry didn’t resemble a berry as much as it looked like a bright red grape, and grew from a single stem, like cherry. I found out later, after failing to find the specimen in my field guide, that it could be a clasping-leaved twisted-stalk, or streptopus amplexifolius, which is apparently from the cucumber family and is edible, but has laxative-like properties.

Directly to the west of both trails is a majestic view of Mt. Evans and Bierstadt, shrouded on the day I went in half-serious rain clouds and giving the area a boost in scenery. So far from any major freeways and roads, the area is serene and lovely, and perfect for contemplation.