Just like fresh, vital food, I need fresh impressions to feel healthy. After a few days following the same patterns, working inside and traveling regular routes along familiar roads, I become peckish. It’s similar to the sensation of gnawing hunger in the belly, just an octave or two up the scale of vibrations.
Failing to heed the call to take in fresh impressions, I begin to feel a malaise setting in. Planning ahead is needed. Inevitably this means going into a forest for a few hours without any technology.
Setting out into the forest, the first thing I notice is the smell of the air, alive with the fresh exhalations of trees. Sooner or later, a sensitivity opens and I begin to feel the forest. With a degree of relaxation my morphic field* becomes porous and begins to connect with the greater living field of the forest. I begin to feel fed.
When my atmosphere shifts from opaque to translucent, from contracted to permeable, it is as though I am breathing a different air with a different body. Though my own field is separate I experience that it is interrelated with the larger subtle body of life.
There are times when more drastic measures are needed in the hygienic cycle. It is something like the need to periodically go on a cleansing diet, a metabolic reset. This calls for an extended period either in nature, or in retreat.
On the cusp of this spring, coincident with a son’s early spring break and uncharacteristically cheap airline tickets, we made a journey to the high desert of Joshua Tree Park in Southern California. The weather was not pleasant. Snow blanketed the tent on the first morning of camping in the wilderness. I washed my face and hands with snow and melted some on the camp stove so I could brush my teeth and have tea as the sun rose over the mountains on the horizon.
After some days of wandering in the desert amidst the forest of otherworldly Joshua Trees, the relative discomfort of the conditions began to feel normal. I noticed that I was no longer huddling in the sleeping bag but willingly got up and unzipped the tent to emerge into the sub-freezing night air under the bright canopy of stars. The acceptance of discomfort opened another level of porousness and sensitivity to the larger body of nature.
Days were spent walking through groves of Joshua Trees, spiky yucca, stiff bushes, and cacti with venom-tipped needles. We learned to step carefully, even as we tromped through deep ravines and along exposed granite ridges. Mostly we were making our way to and from the striking desert-granite cliffs to rock climb.
Joshua Tree climbs are as threatening as the landscape, with long runouts between protection, though not deadly in most cases. Having climbed here almost 40 years earlier, I was eager to see my teenage son taste the unique rock and climbing style.
Arriving at the base of a cliff, we pulled out our ropes and hardware and ventured onto the vertical dimension, entering that other domain in which the force of gravity has new and profound implications. We were there to climb “Breakfast of Champions,” a route of about 300 feet. To my deep satisfaction he ventured out onto an exposed face, keeping his wits about him as he made delicate moves with the potential of a 50-foot fall.
The immediacy of climbing can provide conditions for a slowing or cessation of associations, for the gossamer membrane of perception between inner and outer to become still more porous. Here the vital food of impressions becomes pungent with unmitigated reality.
Little by little the impression of the natural world became clearer, and with it a corresponding impression of my own nature. The shape of the granite outcrops, occasional birds, coyotes, and hearty flora came into focus and we felt we were immersed in and a part of a harmonious, living body transforming energies—a masterpiece of creation both in its parts and as a whole, both in form and substance.
Rising and retiring with the sun, the moon growing from half to full night by night, preparing food on a campfire had the palpable effect of resetting the rhythms of my inner clock to cosmic and elemental time. I understood why ancient civilizations synchronized the patterns of their collective lives with natural and celestial cycles.
Arriving home my son was worried that he wouldn’t be able to sustain the harmonious disposition we developed together in the wilderness. It was clear that such a state cannot be sustained without corresponding conditions. Nevertheless, we can strive to provide these conditions for ourselves, not to feel better, but because it is necessary.
* “Morphic field” is a term coined by the progressive scientist Rupert Sheldrake and refers to the measurable and arguably intelligent bioelectric atmosphere surrounding every living body.
This article appears in April 2025.
