Two weekends ago, I ventured up the Mt. Baker Highway with undefined plans to make my first sojourn of the season in to the high country. It was a spur-of-the-moment adventure and, winding my way eastward and alone, I found myself wishing I had a hiking partner to share the sunny day with – a longing that was soon satisfied when I crossed paths with an old friend at the ranger station in Glacier. Having explored Washington's wilds together for nearly two decades, neither of us were surprised to see the other. He jumped in to my truck and we drove to road's end at Artist's Point, where we struck out towards the fearsome glaciers of Komo Kulshan.
The day was blindingly bright and relentlessly hot. We strode along the trail, across lingering patches of snow and up onto an exposed high ridge that offered the hint of a breeze -- a blessing that kept the bugs at bay. The path wound through fields of lupine and valerian and rock gardens festooned with stonecrop, monkeyflower and heather in full-bloom. Below us yawned barren, boulder-filled valleys only recently released from the great pressures of scouring ice. A ptarmigan rustled in the shade of contorted spruce trees and ravens croaked overhead, swirling and diving against the flawless blue sky. We walked slow, absorbing these varied details and intoning the names of species, landmarks and processes that dovetail to shape this alpine Elysium.
All of this investigating -- our burrowing in to the layers of stories that landscape offers to the curious -- reminded me of how much more rewarding spending time in nature is when one knows a bit about where one is. Accessing this knowledge, and having a few simple tools to learn more along the way – a topo map, compass, wildflower field guide and hand lens – provided my friend and I an intimacy with our surroundings. This intimacy enriched our day by deepening our experience. It allowed us to bear grateful witness to the intertwined narratives of the landscape and, most importantly, provided us countless entry points in to the impersonal drama and beauty of the wild.
Rapport with nature fosters connection, and connection enhances our sense of belonging. This is no small comfort, to feel ensconced on a planet of rock, water and ice hurtling through the dark void of space at 67,000 miles per hour.
I once asked Northwest naturalist Robert Michael Pyle, rambler *par excellence* and award-winning author of Wintergreen, Sky Time in Gray's River and several volumes on butterflies, about the benefits of studying natural history.
"We always care more about our neighbors, and our neighborhood, when we know their names and something about their ways of life," Pyle responded. "This is just good manners for any resident of a particular place."
Knowing that, in our society, many people want to know what they'll "get" before exerting any effort, I asked Pyle what an individual gains from possessing such knowledge.
"A window on the world everywhere," he replied, "for what is local knowledge *here* is always applicable *there*: one sees patterns of relationship and connection, once one is used to looking at the real physical details of any given place. Local natural history provides a lingua franca for feeling at home anywhere. "
Lupine, raven, "glaciated andesitic stratovolcano." It was good to be home.
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