Awareness Rests in the Pumpkin Pause between Autumn and Winter

“How could we have missed this before?” I ask now at the well-marked trailhead.

He doesn’t answer. He’s deep in a thicket of thoughts.

Porter in the thicket of his thoughts

We continue up the trail. Some preoccupations fall off, others grow louder in the stillness: Did we lock the car? Should I be home working? Will we get to camp before dark? We’re in our thoughts, but want really to be in this lush green forest of aspen and spruce, fragrant with pine and dust. My mind–inside; nature–outside, and the bridge between the two feels broken.

The broken bridge

But the trail is more continuous than we think, over St. Vrain Creek, through bluebells, paintbrush, sunflowers, daisies and black-eyed Susans.

Climbing higher into the Indian Peaks Wilderness, we reach Red Deer Lake at dusk.

Red Deer Lake, 10,372 feet

No thoughts disturb its surface. Brook and brown trout swim in its deep blue.  We sleep.

Dawn

This fir-scented dawn is both dark and light.

Morning, we climb rocky trail across alpine tundra to see what grows above treeline.

What grows

We reach the summit of Buchanan Pass, 11,837 feet.

The summit of love!

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to be.

Just rest.

In my own experience hiking the 2,663-mile Pacific Crest Trail with my husband, Porter, I felt a synthesis of all three–mind and body in nature. Nearly six months without cell phones or computers allowed for a deep interior rest, even as we struggled to hike twenty-plus miles a day over mountains, across deserts, and through rivers. Our attentiveness grew at once sharper–to navigate, find water, watch for mountain lions and bears–and more intuitive, sensing our way into the wilderness.

How did nature affect our minds? Immediately after our return, we were able to make a series of complex decisions with refreshed analytic powers as well as trust in the spontaneous flow of life. Our lives changed in ways we were suddenly ready for. We moved to Boulder, Colorado, where outdoor adventure is a vital part of our days. Having left his old job to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, Porter found deeply satisfying work in hospice and palliative medicine. I spend part of the day hiking in the Foothills of the Rockies, and part at the computer to bring the wordless knowing of nature first to consciousness and then into language, through my book and blog.

Our digital technologies, from devices to social media, reflect our longing to connect. They’re not an end but a means to relatedness with each other and the world. For a direct connection unmediated by technology, listen to the wind, feel the bark of a tree, look into the sky or into the eyes of another. Fall silent. That’s nature.