I am not hiking for a cause, but if I were (and maybe I will) this would be it...
If you are passionate about hiking, than you are passionate about our planet. Our planet is an amazing yet fragile place that has evolved over millions of years - but it is under threat. We have a duty to protect what we love, for ourselves and for our children.
My hike is about getting back to the source of all things - Nature - and then sharing that with people around me. You may believe that the source of all things is God, but let's not get into semantics. God = Nature and Nature = God. Both words refer to the beauty that is in humanity and in this planet, that we need to preserve for future generations.
If nothing else, I would like to bring awareness to people about the destructive cycle we are, as a culture, engaged in: to always move faster and faster and produce more and more.
I would like future generations to be able hike the Pacific Crest Trail and be absorbed in nature as I will have the great privilege to be. If I can awaken even one person from the "consumerist machine" and give that person awareness of the impact our way of life has on our planet and our species, then I will feel successful.
This video has an amazing message. Don't let the alarmist tone detract from enjoying the visual experience! You may want to turn the volume off and play it with other music, but my hope is that you will come away feeling a greater sense of responsibility to our home.
I have just a month to go until I hit the trail, but spring is already in full bloom here in Southern Arizona. To test out my new Canon S100 I took a short drive over to the Tohono Chul Park botanical garden and found the birds chirping and the flowers blooming. It's amazing how just a little excursion into nature - albeit man-made nature - can lift your spirits and refresh your attitude. Click on each image to see the full size picture. Enjoy!
 |
| Hummingbird in Flight |
I wanted to share a passage from Peter Matthiessen's book "The Snow Leopard", that leapt out at me:
"Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. And this debasement of our vision, the retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters from free-swimming life into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes un-lived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came.
Compare the wild, free paintings of the child with the stiff, pinched "pictures" these become as the painter notices the painting and tries to portray "reality" as others see it; self-conscious now, he steps out of his own painting and, finding himself apart from things, notices the silence all around and becomes alarmed by the vast significations of Creation. The armor of the "I" begins to form, the construction and desperate assertion of separate identity, the loneliness: Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern."
