Awe and Wonder, Here and Now Issue 11 – Appreciating the Sacred Wilderness

Morning in a New Land
Mary Oliver

In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream.
The pink sun fell, like glass, into the fields.
Two chestnuts, and a dapple gray,
Their shoulders wet with light, their dark hair streaming,
Climbed the hill. The last mist fell away,

And under the trees, beyond time’s brittle drift,
I stood like Adam in his lonely garden
On that first morning, shaken out of sleep,
Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,
Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.

I spent a week at Ring Lake Ranch, Dubois, Wyoming this July. Marcus and I experienced Ring Lake for our first time in 1998. On our first morning there, I stood, shaken out of sleep, rubbing my eyes, to see a vast, incredible gift. Over the next ten plus years Marc and I returned to Ring Lake every summer. I will continue the conversation on our blog about a topic we explored during my week there this year. But here I want to share a brief autobiographical note.  A pivotal experience in 1995 that disturbed my ground of being for receiving the gifts of Ring Lake. And more.

“The More”

As background. From early years I was fascinated with William James’s seminal work, “The Varieties of Religious Experience” and what he calls, in a sweeping term, “The More.” The More made complete intuitive sense to me. I always sensed that there was something beyond what was perceptible to the eye, beyond what the heart could know, what the mind could comprehend or imagine. And this “More” lay outside the here and now, outside this world. I held this assumption for most of my young and adult life. And accounts for some of my early interest in the metaphysical, which I saw as a higher level of inquiry, beyond the physical or physics.

In 1995 Marc and I were privileged to make Safari in the once named Transvaal of South Africa. The wonders of the great out of doors and the natural world were kept far from me during my growing up years. During that time my mother became increasingly agoraphobic and Dad, a one time member of the Sierra Club, accommodated my mother’s insistence on the indoors. Our occasional trips to Lake Winnepesaukah were contingent on well-supplied cabins, tightly sealed window screens and a restaurant with a bar.

My own explorations during my young adult life included opera houses and museums. And an interest in metaphysics.

Finding the Sacred Wilderness in The Bush

Going to “The Bush” was an opportunity far more challenging than traipsing through New England and more foreign that traveling to Europe. The Bush was my first encounter with “sacred wilderness.” It was beautiful. Daunting. And dangerous. I found myself referring to this wilderness, this wildness, as dangerous beauty. Perhaps a little like Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Alluring. And terrifying.

And I was completely illiterate in this world. I could not read scat or a trail. I did not know what leaves could be used for toilet paper and what ones oozed poisonous goo. I could not read the weather to come. I could not decipher the telltale smells as to what had been across the path just moments ago. I did not understand natural habitat. I was ignorant in this world. And profoundly aware of it. I felt like a guest. An ignorant guest. Uninvited. More like a trespasser. And I was vulnerable.

Dangerous Beauty

I also remember having two rather destabilizing awarenesses. One, I sensed a very thin veil between the living and the dead. Life and death inexorably, magnificently, fiercely playing out. And this playing out was not a moral tale. It was about survival. And its costs. And rawness. Dangerous beauty. Second, I became very aware that over this “vast incredible gift” we have secured cultural and interpretative templates. So detailed and tight that we have almost obliterated the “understory” upon which we stand. My deeply enculturated templates blinded me here, made a myriad frequencies inaudible, and restrained unnamed passion.

But in The Bush the templates that shielded me were shattered by the very force of compelling, undomesticated life. Like Augustine’s reflection on God, “you shattered my deafness… you drove away my blindness… now I burn with longing….” I was disoriented. And my heart was troubled. I felt its pounding. In a way I had not before. It was like The Bush cracked open my rib cage to get to the heart of the matter. To expose it. Revive it. And this CPR both threatened my life and saved it.

Time Stopped

We saw the Big Five. They caused me to tremble. In awe and wonder. And I will never forget looking deep into the amber eyes of a lioness. And she looked deep into my eyes as well. Time stopped. Or was it eternity?

By the end of our journey, with considerable “post-critical naivete,” and now safely under my “sacred canopy,” I thought: To be eaten by a lion, what a way to go!  Consumed by dangerous beauty. Feeding it. Becoming part of it. Body and blood.

My experience and encounters in The Bush shifted something in me and tilted the trajectory of my life. It has been a slow work. But decisive. The world “offered itself to my imagination… harsh and exciting” and affected how I saw “my place in the family of things.” (Mary Oliver)

My experience in The Bush also affected how I do theology. And it changed my sense of “the More.” Rather than thinking the “More” is beyond, somewhere “out there” I experienced it profoundly, irrevocably here. In and through the wonder of creation and everything that brought it into existence. The More is like understory. Double entendre intended.

Where Our Future Lies

My consciousness might want to project the exhilaration of my encounters in The Bush outside myself. And outside of this world. But my experiences also prevent me from doing so.  I am located here, in existence, where my soul came into being and where it depends. And here is where the planet’s future lies. And our own.

1995 was a turning point for me. What began in 1995 continued at Ring Lake Ranch and continues to transform my understanding to this day. The sacred wilderness calls me back. And illumines my way forward.

Ring Lake has been a place to experience community, renewal, sacred wilderness and wonder for 50 years. Its mission and history is narrated in a recent book by Carl Koch, “Renewal in Sacred Wilderness.” The land itself beckons. Lures. And tells its story with unvarnished honesty. The Bush and the beautiful setting of Ring Lake Ranch are libraries of time. They call to us to wake up, to rub open our eyes open to the vast incredible gift that is before us.

What have you experienced and learned about “The Sacred” from encounters in the wilderness or outdoors? And how do you compare such learning with “book learning?”

And what do you think about poetry being a bridge from language to experience or experience to language? (A topic we explored at Ring Lake.)

Let us know what you think and wonder about.

A Post Script:
I am struck by this quote from John Muir (1912) that has been part of the mission of the Sierra Club: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.”