The Hazard of Denying Our Birthright
Humans walk the Earth. 20,000 year old prints from Whitesands New Mexico.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/oldest-human-footprints-north-america-2013058
The landscape is our teacher and our interaction with it, and all of its hazards and medicines, is critical for our development, intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually. It is through both action on the landscape and reflection for integration, that our consciousness elevates so that we can make better choices in the future. It is our birthright to travel the landscape. Our anscestors migrated from place to place when conditions changed so that different areas were used for plant and animal harvesting. It was a strategy used for survival. We also know, from an anthropoligical perspective, that walking the land was an integral part of the human journey of development. Our ancestors went in solitude to the landscape in order to find direction in their lives. All traditions tell these stories. The “Walk About” in Austrailia, the rites of passage of North American First Nations traditions and of course in the Biblical accounts (which I like to think of as a metaphor) of Moses and Jesus, finding guidance and direction in the wilderness. Wilderness is where we become sane.
Adventurer: Warren Macdonald knows intimately, the healing that comes from traveling in wild places.
The notion that we should not be in wild places because of our impact is misguided. We belong in wild places just as any other animal belongs. Our exchanges with other beings that exist there are just as important for the animals and plants, as they are for use humans. With the goal of being mindful of how these exchanges occur, we open the door to learning from eachother, and to take what is needed with respect and without waste.
I remember facilitating a group of students from the Haskane School of Business into the mountain wilderness near Calgary. The course was part of their leadership training and was a dojo for navigating hazards that had authentic potential for negative consequence. We were mindful of managing our food and sleeping systems in response to the fact that we were traveling in grizzly bear country. On one of our mornings we arose to find a bear digging two metres from one of the tents. The bear was doing its thing, harvesting the carbohydrate rich Alpine Hedysarum root, we were doing ours. This encounter taught me a lot about co-existence. We did it right, both us humans, and the bear.
The notion that humans do not belong in nature is blasphemy. We all inhabit this small planet and we all fit in wild places. If our impact is a problem, then lets learn to travel the landscape in harmony with the plants and the animals that are there. Most importantly, we must elevate our game while adventuring. Rather than consuming adventure events for no apparent purpose, we have little option but to use our adventuring in wild places to raise our consiousness of ourselves, others and of the environment. Let’s use our journeys to mature, so that we are sensitive to the systems of which we are a part. Let us learn to make elevated wise decisions in highly consequential situations. And let us learn, at long last, to be a part of a community where we are all interdependent. This is the way forward for all of us.
Walking the Earth in Cuba in 2007.
For more information on using adventure for human development or to heal from misadventure contact ken@archetypal.ca