Walks and runs through the wilderness somehow make the rest of life make more sense but I don’t really get that much of a chance to do either living within the San Diego City limits. What does pass for wilderness here is mostly in the form of canyons or hills that all run the same shade of brown (with a few greenish-brown cacti or scrub brush dotting their sides). Despite that, I have tried to find as much time as possible exploring San Diego’s wilderness and beaches and have found that spending time there makes going back to “real life” a little easier. Even better are the far-too-infrequent opportunities I’ve had to wander further abroad in mountains and forests, surrounded by the smell of pine and the sound of the wind in the trees. It is out there alone wandering, running, just staring at it all, that I can regain some of the sanity I lost throughout the year. Jack Kerouac does a much better job summing up this feeling in this quote from Dharma Bums:
"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling."
Perhaps, as Kerouac points out, the reason that I have found so much solace in the mountains and wild places is because when I am there I realize that my life is so small. That really, as much good as I do or as much as I screw up, the world will continue: what I do is truly insignificant. Instead of this realization crushing me (as it probably should), I find hope in it. It really doesn’t make any logical sense, but feeling insignificant is completely necessary to being able to stand in these cathedrals of nature and truly appreciate them. Being laid low by the power, grandeur, and beauty of these places makes me want to reconnect with what it is that makes them so magnificent.
The photos below might do a better job summing up what I mean.
