Natures’ Great Initiation

‘Enlightened’ - A photograph by Brad Carr.

This wilderness has saved me. I came out here just a boy; struggling with identity and lacking in purpose and direction. The men in my early life had abandoned me and I learnt not to place too much trust in men anymore. A world ruled by men in my child's mind was a scary place to be. As a result, I learnt to place the utmost amount of trust in myself from a young age.

For the most part, I matured quickly in the absence of a reliable and consistent father figure in my life, but there were (and still are) many parts of me that were immature and under-developed. The masculine half of my psyche, in parts, was still trapped in my childhood somewhere. I learnt very early that to be a man was dangerous. Men were volatile, full of anger, and would quickly erupt into a fit of rage without too much in the way of provocation.

If it wasn’t for my interactions with Nature at a precious stage of my life, and my discovery of long-forgotten wild places that have helped me to reconnect with my own wild man within, I believe that I would still be frozen in the immature boy psyche; afraid to step up, face the real world, and take responsibility for my own life, and ready to run whenever things became too much of a challenge.

Nature, for half a decade now, has kept me grounded, and just like the trees, my roots are reaching deep into the earth. I have little desire to run away any more, because I know where it is that I belong. I have learnt to stand strong and face any challenges head on with bravery and courage. I had no idea when I began this long journey inwards, just how important these interactions would become as I danced between the threshold of my boy/ man psyche.

In a culture so devoid of initiation for young men, unless you count the crude and repulsive tasks that are encouraged by sports clubs that so often include drinking obscene amounts of alcohol or engaging in shaming acts in public, it is no wonder that we have so many men struggling with direction and structure in their life; turning to addictions as a way of coping with their problems instead of understanding and working through them before it is too late, and the pressures of life become unbearable.

I found my own form of initiation through my adventures into the wilderness, and creativity quickly became my only addiction. This voyage into my own soul has forced me to face the most frightening of demons as I have opened up the darkest corners of my heart and revealed many of the stories that I once kept hidden from the world. As I have explored the landscape alone for the past few years, I have been forced to face many of the real world fears that await a young man, too.

Solitude, as it happens, has never scared me too much from what I remember. I am privileged in so many ways to have always been a great lover of it, so it didn’t take long for me to find my peace and place out in the wilderness. Despite my early adversities and struggles, I guess I had something of a head start in life in that sense, having grown to love my own company from an early age.

Having observed and studied my own development over the past few years through my journaling practices and essay writing, I can now understand why Nature plays such an important role in all mythical and religious stories of the past; why trees often contain spirits and the voice of God can be heard when a man walks into the wilderness and distances himself from the judgment and rules of society.

It takes for us to walk a while before the noise of the thinking mind silences and we can hear those feint whispers of truth from the depths of our own soul. This voice of truth has become my best friend, and it is vital that I make time to listen to it so that I can keep on sailing toward the port that I initially set out for.

I found a sense of belonging in my solitude, and now that is all that I find myself longing for in life. As I sit and write this, I am aware of the current distance between myself and the natural world. Sadly, life has a tendency of getting in the way sometimes, and pulls us away from where it is that we belong. Survival, at one point in time, meant scouring the landscape for food and shelter. Now it depends on our capability to scour and utilise the digital landscape of the Internet. I have found some peace in that, but it doesn’t mean that it makes my sadness any more bearable and my longing for the wild places any less intense.

I live in hope that the sacrifices that I am making now will allow me the greatest pleasure of living in close proximity and harmony with Nature in the future. I often have to remind myself of my youth, and that I have plenty of years ahead of me to connect with the spirit of the earth. It always brings me some peace to be around some of the trees that have seen so much more than me in their lifetimes.

I have hopes that my story of initiation into the world of men through adventure and creativity can stand for something in the future. This is something that I believe in with all of my heart and the soul that is deeply connected to the divine spirit of this earth. I am a great lover of stories because they carry forth the wisdom that a person has accrued in their life. Back at the beginning of all of this, I was blind and naïve to what it was that I was doing, but I felt like I was being led by something to create. The purpose is all beginning to make sense to me now that I understand the power of a story.

Nature is, and always will be, our greatest guide and teacher. Nature is the gateway to divine knowledge, and the pathway back to our souls. Nature binds and unites us all, and it is imperative, I believe, that every man and woman goes out in search of, and drinks from, Mother Nature’s infinite spring; filling their hearts’ cup at such a fragile period of life.