Nature Journal: Seeing
Today I began reading Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim on Tinker Creek. Chapter Two: Seeing really opened my mind to the beauties and simplicity of our senses and perceptions. Through them we experience the world around us. Her comments on the polluting influence of words to those senses really hit home with me. Now don’t get me wrong. I am incredibly grateful for language, speech and the written word. Language and the communication of ideas are what separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Though I can’t quite convey my gratitude for language and words, I nevertheless can connect exactly with what she wrote. While words can convey what we see, feel, hear, smell, and taste they are themselves a limited means of communicating the essence of the experiences themselves.
As Dillard wrote of her incident reading the book detailing the experience of the cataract surgery recipients, once they were exposed to the world, their associations with words and the new sights they were just beginning to behold did not feel like they held true. Our experience shapes us. We come to define our world by what we feel about it. We take on our own vocabulary and as we do so, our perceptions and feelings regarding the words we use come to define the objects or perceptions originally intended to be described by those very words. After reading that chapter I looked up from my book and looked at the wallpaper. The intersecting navy and yellow lines seemed to produce a depth in each square of material that I hadn’t noticed before and felt for a moment like I received new eyes. But at the same time my description of the depth and feeling of a new discovery though it be a small one, still left me with a feeling I couldn’t quite describe.
The beauty of nature is that our experiences with it can’t wholly be defined by words. There’s something more to it than that. There’s a spirit of sorts just for the experiences we have with Mother Earth. The reading immediately reminded of my feelings while hiking. I love hiking with a group, but only for the sake of companionship and safety when needed. Hikes for me are more of a spiritual experience than a social event. I like to be alone with nature. As I hike up mountains and soak in the beauty of the forest, or the desert, or the newly laid snow, a sort of solemn introspection comes upon me. I find myself communicating with nature in a way that is different than the perception of my senses. Nature does teach me to repent. I find myself thinking about my place in the world, where my standing with God is, and what I need to improve upon. I think about my future, my goals, and how I can accomplish them. Talking with people disrupts my internal analyses. They seem to know it too. Maybe they are having the same experience, or maybe my short responses before a return to introspection tune them in. It takes Nature a good hour to get the message to me. Once I finally get it, it’s nice to talk to people – always with concern for their own internal communions of course. I really have no words for what I feel as I hike.
At the end of every hike is a destination. Of course when you get there, you’re accompanied by long awaited sighs and overwhelmed awes at the first moments when you reach your view. And it’s at those times, when words fail. During the ascent, my internal struggling was defined by words. It was almost as if my soul was having an intimate conversation with the nature around me. But here at mountain zeniths and plateau edges everything is silent. This silence fills you with peace. An overpowering appreciation comes over you for the scenes before you. Of course everyone in your hiking party is offering explanations for the feelings you’re having, but somehow with all our grandeur and sophistication of speech we all fall short of the communicating the beauty before us and again silence falls. The meaning of words stops here and we find ourselves sensing the world around us without any influence besides the pure magnificence making itself known to our souls.
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