Sound
In the wilderness, all sounds are welcomed. The wind provides clues to its direction and magnitude; thunder direct indication of an approaching storm. The breaking of branches notifies us of an approaching deer. The shrill call of a marmot—an alert of our own approach or that of a bear. Even the buzz of the mosquito and fly are warnings of their impending bite. All sounds are welcomed. Not a single one do we filter or hope that it will subside. Every night camped with the backdrop of a creek is a night spent in deep sleep.

Returned to the world of human creation, my senses are overwhelmed. Moving over concrete and pavement when my body aches for the sensation of the trail beneath my feet. No longer do I adjust my center of gravity for each footfall, a kind of walking dance with an earthen partner. Rather, I simply fall forward, step by step in an disengaged slumber. I am reminded how the world we occupy was forged in an effort to reduce the effort required to conduct even the most basic of tasks.

Taste
Soft, warm huckleberries suspended within reach of passing hikers. More than anyone could count let alone consume. Bright blue Oregon grapes at foot provide a bitter balance to the consistently sweet thimble berries whose textured red cap is readily transported from stalk to lips with but a pinch. Elderberries are prevalent but desire to be consumed as wine, not in raw form. Salmon berries. Raspberries. Clusters of bright orange fruit suspended from thin fingers of mountain ash.

Crystal clear, crisp streams continue the downward fall from cloud to snowfield and glacier to kettle pond and river. With and without filtration, these molecules have flavor, a reminder that water in and of itself can be enjoyed.

Raman noodles, rice, and rehydrated vegetables are cherished as though served by a world renowned chef in a top ranked restaurant. Even the simplest of flavors come to life when days are measured not by hours on a watch, but by miles on the trail and having reached once distant peaks.

Physical
It is a mistake to say that “touch” is a sense, for it is not what we reach out and grab, rather what reaches out and grabs us that brings us into the physical world. When we remove the comfort of our climate controlled home and step out into the unsafe domain beyond, it is only the metabolic processes of our cellular respiration that keeps us from freezing, overheating, or succumbing to the temptation of a storm.

Strip off our clothes, remove our steel shanked boots, unfurl the locks of unkept hair and dip into the cool, silky water of glacial run-off, turquoise as seen from afar. In shallow, still pools it is warmed by the sun. The slick mud moves between toes with so little friction that one is likely to slide from bank to center of pond, having no choice but to fully immerse and swim back to shore, grabbing grasses and shrubs by their roots to rise up and place bare bottom back on land.

This is the physical engagement, the realization that we are nothing without our gear. We are just another naked animal enjoying the movement of ice over stone, melt over land, and sun over water.

Sight
My eyes that find burden in seeing just a meter to my front after days peering at a computer screen once again find a more dynamic range of motion and visual depth. Colors well beyond the range of 16-bit overwhelm my senses and remind me that our experience of this world will never be matched by a digital facsimile.

Mists at dawn linger over dark forest cover. Whales mingle in shallow waters close to shore. Water falls from high nooks, cascading into perpetually turbulent pools. Eagles rest on bare branches back from tidal shores, patient for the next time the water recedes and food is exposed. Mountain ridge after ridge recede into the distance, each a shade of gray and purple combined. Growing flames of Cascade fires cover the valley floor with what could at first be mistaken for ladened clouds lying too low.

Our breath is caught in that place where emotion is held, pulling at a sense of longing, a blend of pain and joy expressed as tears. The complex dance of photons upon retina invokes memories carried from long before our childhood.

Smell
Pine needles both dry and moist carry a distinctive aroma immediately recognized as one marches up trail. From sun baked, earthen footpaths covered in crumbled remains of the pine’s lost luster to shaded, packed layers of fallen debris so thick as to invoke the sensation that the earth itself is a trampoline. And with a gust of wind chemical compounds are released, wafting up into the currents and eddies only to be inhaled as a memory of another times when I explored, rested, or made love beneath pine trees.

How does one return from a place that feels right, to a world in which so little makes sense?

How does one move from the lichens and moss underfoot to the lifeless barrier of concrete?

How does one block, filter, and shut-out the city when the sounds of the wilderness are all wanting to be heard?

This transition, this return to the complex, human-crafted world is not easy when the one at the end of the lake and up, into the mountains is what feels natural and life giving.

It had been twenty some years since I ventured to the top of Mt. Lemmon, just to the North of Tucson, Arizona. Not a difficult venture at all, but one that has been too far off my path of travel to make worth while. As I was at the Biosphere yesterday afternoon with my colleague Don Boonstra, and the thought of returning to the heat of Phoenix too much to bear, I drove up Catalina Canyon, just as the sun set, and turned into a campground whose name I now forget.

I didn’t have any cash, and as such could not complete the self-registration form for a site. Instead, I drove to the farthest end of the campground, the sites numbered over 60. There I found a parking lot at the trail head to a lake. It was empty other than an SUV which parked long enough for the drive and passenger to venture to the lake for a skinny dip (or so I presumed, given the laughter and breathless giggles as they returned … of course, there are other things they could have done, but they weren’t gone very long.)

I pulled in backward so as to orient my car to slope from head to foot, with me laying in the back. I left the windows part way down and enjoyed the cold, pine ladened night air. Only for the image of waking to a bear tugging on the bottom of my blanket (and toes) did I not leave the back of my Subaru Forester open.

I set the alarm for 5 am so as to leave the park without being asked to pay. I know, not a good standard, but it has been many years, more than a decade since I slept-n-ran at a National Forest campground. And given that my phone had died, the time slewed, and my 5 am alarm woke me at what I later realized was 3:30 am, I didn’t feel too bad. (Yes, it occurred to me that the sun should have been up, not a star in the sky, yet I didn’t put all the pieces together until later …)

I enjoyed four, maybe four and a half hours of sleep before driving the last half hour to the top of the mountain. I drove through Summitville, and explored a trail head on the far side. Back to a turn-out that looked over the Eastern side of Mt. Lemmon and the Oracle Control Road.

Wrapped in a blanket, the calming sound of pine trees moved by a constant breeze, I intentionally missed the sunrise by my eyes, but enjoyed its warm greeting on my face.

Despite the early rise, shuffle, and sleep spent in two beds, by 7:30 am I had slept better than I had in weeks. I woke to a breakfast of yogurt and a bagel, then went to use the National Park Service restroom. To my surprise, a bird was flitting from one side to the other while I was inside, just over my head. It was unable to get out while the door was shut. I opened the door, and it immediately departed.

Then something caught my eye. Its nest was made on the corner of the interior window sill. As an NPR story I had listened to the day before shared the results of researchers moving bird nests to see if they would be discovered again resulted in a positive pattern, I thought it would be best to move the nest just outside the door, less than a meter away.

However, upon carefully lowering the nest into the palm of my hand, I discovered four sleeping chicks, incredibly small, fuzzy, and not even disturbed by the motion. Only when I made too abrupt a move did they stir, lift their heads, and open their beaks. I photographed them, then returned the next to its original location.

I returned to my car to make a sign to hang on the wall, to ask patrons of this facility to NOT close the door so that the mother can come and go. Upon re-entering the restroom, the mother bird had returned to the nest. That’s good.

I attempted to make my way down the backside of Mt. Lemmon, on Old Mt. Lemmon Road. While I had done so easily in a low-clearance Subaru hatchback many years before, my Forester struggled to find angles of approach that did not expose its underbelly to sharp rocks and small boulders that now stood out in this clearly unmaintained road.

With a conference call looming, I had no choice but to turn around and head back up the seemingly one-way road, back onto the pavement, and home.

The individual needle does little to block the hot Sun.

Yet the pine tree casts a cool shadow all day long.