I Value Nature More Than an Orgasm

Nature

I Value Nature More Than an Orgasm

Peace and quiet. Solitude. Forest bathing. Climbing mountains. Fording rivers. Hiking desert washes. Hearing birds. Finding snakes. I crave all these experiences more than anything else, more than sexual release and orgasms.

I value these things above nearly everything in my life, except for my family, dogs, and a very select group of friends. They are equal in my eyes.

Nature and my experiences with her are deeply entwined in my DNA, spirit, and soul if you wish.

I love to watch the falling leaves in autumn. I want to feel the blanket of snow falling in winter. I love the song of a Carolina wren in the spring, and I enjoy the rolling tides of the beach in the summer.

All this, this entire reality, is for you and me. For us. If only we allow it back inside us. It’s the only way I’ve found to make us whole again.

Too often we struggle with life in this society and culture. Capitalism markets to us what our perfect life should be. Fast cars, a house, children, making money, and lots of sex. Sex everywhere. Adrenaline junkies, pleasure-seekers, and YOLO’ing. Instagram FOMO and the nagging feeling that you’re not good enough.

Those nagging feelings…

Am I good enough?

Am I worthy of love?

Am I happy?

What does happiness mean to me?

Do I deserve to be happy?

Why do I feel like time is running out for me?

I spent three weeks camping and hiking in the desert southwest before I moved back to New Jersey. That was over 26 years ago.

I camped in Canyonlands National Park. I climbed trails in Capitol Reef. I hiked to the Landscape Arch in Moab. I slept under the stars every night.

I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life at that point. I had the biggest shit-eating grin on my face at all times. I got cut by desert brush, I bled, I sweated, I starved, and I excised the demons that haunted me for years.

I did this all alone.

I was scared at first but then I found something.

I found a connection to the whole.

I have nothing against sex. In fact, I welcome a loving and healthy relationship with a partner or two (if so inclined). The sweet release of orgasms and the deep intimate connection it can bring is something our human condition demands. Everyone should try it, at least once.

Yet, too often we look outward to others to fulfill that need. We rely on lovers, friends, and family to make us feel whole.

We might catch a taste of it, a sensation that for a few fleeting minutes brings us to the “high.”

We realize that we are not whole. So we seek the next thrill. The next lover. The next drink. The next whatever.

We seek something, anything, to make us feel whole again.

Dare I say, you are whole, you just don’t know it. You just need to dig deep inside yourself and find it. It’s there.

I was born with nothing and I will leave this world with nothing. Along the way, I got married and had kids. I own a house and have a 401k. I have stuff and I’m doing alright, but in the end, I can’t take it with me.

Two generations after my death, no one will remember me. Just like the billions of people that came before me, who remembers them? The only thing I can do, I can ever do in this world, is to leave it behind better than how I found it.

In the meantime, I can experience this reality. I can be a part of this world, be a part of this creation called Nature. I can feel the spirituality of it. I can hear the sermon from the wilderness. It calls the faithful to her trails, to her peaks, and to her oceans.

When REM’s song, “Losing my Religion” was released in 1991 and skyrocketed to the top of the charts, I watched some pastor on TV talking about the gravity of losing one’s religion, especially the Christian religion.

He said, paraphrased here, that “you can lose your job, and your family. You can always get a new job or start a new family, but you could never get a new God. Your connection to him is your salvation in the afterlife.

Bah, I say. You don’t need an invisible sky bully to feel a connection. You were born with the connections, they just atrophied from the poison this society has fed you.

I cut ties with the Christian God a long time ago. I practice no religion to speak of, but I can’t deny what I feel when I’m outside in a forest or a desert wash. I regenerate those atrophied connections. I feel a sense of awe. I feel a sense of peace and rebirth. I feel whole.

There is no man on a white cloud. There is just me, my two feet on the earth, and my connection to the existence around me.

Taking a walk on a first or second date is always a great way to learn about a potential lover and partner. Family picnics are always fun. A trip to the beach or mountains is never frowned upon, especially if it gets you out of an urban area.

We connect with Nature all the time but we can’t read her message. It’s an unreadable communication we don’t understand.

After our trip outdoors we pack up and go back to a soul-crushing job. We drink from plastic water bottles. We dream of a time when we retire and spend our time in our gardens, on the golf courses, or wasting away on a beach somewhere.

We dream of free time. We dream of connection outside.

We stopped for two nights in Moab, Utah this summer. We got there at the tail end of the day and checked into the hotel first before we headed downtown for dinner.

After dinner, we decided to roam around the small downtown and check out the shopping. My partner and kids went shopping for t-shirts and knick-knacks. I found an indie bookshop and went in.

The bookshop had a large section of local writers and of the southwest. I gravitated like a bee to a flower when I saw that section. Of course, there were books by Edward Abbey, a local hero. Prominently displayed was his desk from when he lived in Moab and wrote “A Desert Solitaire.”

I like Abbey’s writing but I wanted more. I asked the proprietress for any suggestions on local writers, preferably women writers. I wanted to get a different viewpoint of the wilderness from a woman’s eyes.

She suggested I read Amy Irvine or Terry Tempest Williams. I decided to go with Irvine first and bought her “A Desert Cabal” because it took on Abbey and his patriarchal views, his xenophobic leanings, and his hypocrisy.

Abbey sure loved nature but burnt up gas driving around in it. He hated immigration because our country was too full of people BUT he had four children.

The proprietress commented, “Hemingway was a shit too but you don’t stop reading him because his work speaks for itself.”

I bought her book. I finished Irvine’s book shortly after I came back home. I found it refreshing to hear a woman’s voice speaking from the wilderness.

I’m particularly drawn to this passage:

“Perhaps this is the way of women: we seek not so much solitude as solidarity, intimacy more than privacy. But it’s the way of wilderness too — in a thriving ecosystem, integration matters far more than independence.”

Yes, integration matters more than independence. To integrate you must connect. You must build connections around you and for yourself. It is not just a “want to” but a need to.

We must reconnect with Nature. Our very survival depends on it. We must dispel the dream of rugged individualism and discern it for what it truly is, a lie.

Another summer is winding down. This morning when I opened the door to let the dogs out I was greeted by a cool breeze. Autumn is almost here. Soon the leaves will change color, Nature will shed her dress. Another year is coming to an end.

I can’t help but think about how I’ve entered the autumn years of my life. Yes, I will die one day but I have no fear of my mortality.

The only fear I have is not cherishing the connections I have with Nature, the one true reality that can show me what it means to be whole.