Ah, to spend some time in the great outdoors – Idaho State Journal

Ive always liked doing it. Among my first memories was being taken up to my grandfathers mining prospect on the face of the Bear River Mountains above Hyrum, Utah. There, during the summer, my father and uncles blasted and dug in the mountainside. Grandfather supervised. It was his prospect. He had named it the Moon Mine.

I was left in sight, after a fashion, on the mountain slope below the mining area. My rules were dont wander over the nearby crestline and watch out for rattlesnakes. Of course, they checked on me, but I had a lot of freedom those summer days to explore and play on the rough patch of the mountainside. It might have been five acres.

The summer days got hot, but I could move out of the sagebrush to under the quaking aspens. I remember the sounds buzzing of the flying grasshoppers, mosquitoes whining, the chatter of the magpies and the feel of a slight breeze. I remember the rush and flutter it made wafting through the aspen.

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Early on, I noticed the daily buildup of dark clouds. That was in the northwest. I learned at some time that direction was Idaho, where we lived most of the year.

Perhaps my strongest non-verbal memories were the smells, especially of the yellow wyethia, which my father called dockweed, and that of the sagebrush.

There was also earthy odor of new rain on the few days when the dark clouds made it all the way to southern Cache Valley.

I came to like the smell of freshly exploded rock and dynamite in the air.

At lunchtime in mining shack, wed eat sandwiches, raw carrots, potato chips and maybe a sweet treat.

I cant remember if it was one summer or two, but those days stand out with a clarity I dont recall with the many more numerous childhood days at home.

Many other strong memories, up to perhaps 7 or 8, were of the outdoors, for example, to my grandfathers other mine, the Amazon, up Logan Canyon and to my great-grandfathers sheep grazing land above Blacksmith Fork Canyon. I absolutely loved Yellowstone National Park. Before long though, interest in Ricks College football and Utah State Aggie sports grew. My father made his career coaching.

I spent a lot of time practicing the shot put and discus throws and playing football as a teenager. My father had been an outstanding athlete in the field events and also football. His knowledge helped me immensely, especial with the discus. Despite the time and interest in sports my most basic desire was to go back to the mountains and explore what was over that crestline and all the rest of them.

I managed to organize my life so I was able to do a lot more in the outdoors than most Americans. Outdoor adventures didnt end when I was in my 20s. They were just beginning.

Some were to see how far or fast I could go, or if I could climb it. Could I find my way? GPS would have horrified me. Then there was the fish and wildlife!

Increasingly, as the years passed I slowed down and increasingly began to contemplate nature, think and feel the deeper meaning of wilderness. Then there was our humanity. Were we out of place in the tree of life given our ravaging of the Earth?

I wasnt alone. If you get to know people who have sought nature, many will tell what we could call a spiritual or mystical experience.

Writing in a sensible way about this kind of experience is difficult because what happens might really be ineffable. Nonetheless, it might go something like this. Suddenly you realize you are part of the universe. That sounds trivial enough obvious, but the thought is filled with emotion. This is different. You are an essential part, at least for now.

In an instant you are gone and are seeing and feeling with the eye and touch of the universe itself. All things are connected to you and with each other. It is right and proper. You are the roots of the adjacent fir tree and the water and soil around them; in the meadow and part of the elk that graze there. Someday soon you will be physically scattered in all places, still part of the universe. Seeing with the universal eye will be permanent because you are part of ultimate nature god. God is everything.

This might be called pantheistic experience. It seems to convey a feeling, an orientation, to love and protect nature, which is not really different than loving yourself and everything people, plants and animals, even the archaea with their incredibly slow life inside the rocks thousands of feet beneath your feet.

If it is actually a theism, pantheism is certainly one without prophets, priests, popes, doctrine or ritual. I might call it a deep orientation, one that prefers the natural.

A premise of pantheism is everything is natural. Supernatural and the unnatural do not exist. God and the universe are entirely natural. God is in the universe, not apart. Even the artificial is natural, too, though it seems to me that a pantheistic orientation nonetheless has a strong aversion to what Ill call screaming artificiality like the hateful sound of two stroke engines. However, its the possibility of artificially intelligent robots that really gives me the creeps, and I dont like the word virtual reality.

As medical science, public health and technology was applied to our lives the average life span greatly increased. It is now stagnating in advanced countries like America. Perhaps deliberate contact with nature can help us.

This is not mere speculation. Experience tells us, and so do many studies, that exposure to natural settings, even briefly, lowers blood pressure and stress. People feel happier and more creative. Medical imaging shows our brains are strongly affected by our movement to a natural setting or even mere perception of sounds like birdsong, burbling water, gentle breezes. Likewise, it is true with photos of natural scenes or certain tastes or smells (think of the smell of springtime).

Real wilderness is not even required just some nature. In fact, the wild might be too rough for some people, but I tend to think the high point of human happiness and the time of our greatest unaided abilities might have been during our long time of a hunting/gathering existence. It was then our brains reached their largest size. Thats also when the entire world was wilderness. Perhaps the worst period came in the ancient empires after agriculture was invented and applied. Populations grew, but elites emerged to commandeer the sudden surplus of food, and, so, starvation and misery haunted all but the few.

I think my life compared to the many billions since the Pleistocene ended has been better than maybe 95 percent of them, and I have to wonder if it is anything but chance that I should live at the time when the failure of humans to organize themselves in a way that conserves the planet will mean the sorry end of our species and most others too.

Dr. Ralph Maughan of Pocatello is a professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He retired after teaching there for 36 years and specializing in elections and public opinion, congressional politics, and the politics of natural resources. He has written three backcountry outdoor guides, including Hiking Idaho with his wife Jackie Johnson Maughan. He has been president or chair of numerous conservation organizations.

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Ah, to spend some time in the great outdoors - Idaho State Journal