What is man that you are mindful of him?

There is something about being alone in the wilderness. All the Jack London stories read around a campfire cannot do it justice. There is security in the other. There is safety in company. But when the cell signals of civilization do not penetrate the deep woods of wilderness, one is left eerily alone with oneself. The ceiling of stars loses its romance and strikes with its vastness. A residual image of beauty before floating into dreams is engulfed with an immense feeling of insignificance and finitude. “If an entire star, a burning fury of grandeur and power, is so infinitesimal in the blackness of night, how much smaller am I?” The breeze is a wind, and the wind is a howl. Darkness swaying all around does not promote warmth. For all I felt with my -20 degree bag, I could have been lying naked and exposed on the ground. And I was, if perception was reality. There were no walls around me, no ceiling above me. The dark recesses of my primal psyche, the part that has been repressed by modern lights and noise, tested its newfound territory.

In the wilderness alone, in the dark, all your accolades are stripped of you. Your degrees, your job, who you are as defined in relationship to others, the brands you wear and the lies you maintain, there is no one to perceive them or give them value. There is no one to affirm you or console you, to stop or encourage you. There is no one to feed your addictions or to reciprocate your codependence. There is no one to save you. The amount of knowledge and illumination you have in your life at any given moment is directly proportional to the strength and radius of your headlamp’s beam. Who are you, in the darkness of your own thoughts? When naked vulnerability is the frigid air you breathe, what is it that keeps you warm? When there are no brick walls to separate you from an untamed and wild reality, what grants you security?

It is rare to be truly alone, if only for a night. I will not soon forget it.

“What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” –Psalm 8:4