Finding our way in the wilderness

Lessons from nature and the quest for meaning

Children from a very young age should be taught that the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West, that if you point your right hand to the East, your face will face North and your back will face South, that the direction of the water in a river is towards the sea, that the Moon rises in the East and sets in the West, that if there is no moon, there is a star that indicates the north and your latitude, that the closer you are from Ecuador, the more you see the Polar Star, and if you see a bird in the middle of the sea, it is because there is land where it flies.

Respect and love for animals, trees, the earth, and the elements that give us life.

Teach them all this before giving them a call phone because the cell phone runs out and the signal is lost… wisdom is never lost. Let’s not let them lose connection.

- author unknown

Double exposure. Row on the Oregon Coast. 2022. Kim Kimberlin photo.

I came across these words the other day and wished I had written them myself. They feel so much more relevant now that we’ve left the city and find ourselves lost in the woods on weekends. Shortly after reading the above quote, one of my closest friends shared that she was considering moving her family out of the big city and into a smaller community. Do it, I told her without hesitation. You’ll love it.

Over the past year, I’ve been immersed in Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a book that, to my delight, is also one of the assigned readings for a course in my master’s program. The book delves into our relationship with language and the land—a relationship I’ve only recently begun to fully appreciate now that I’ve moved away from the concrete jungle. In the mornings, deer wander through our yard, and I find myself contemplating which flowers to plant next year that might withstand their appetite. I can’t help but laugh when I think back to the night my dad was babysitting for us. After the kids were in bed, he jumped off the couch, startled by something peering through the window. It was just a curious deer.

Row, my daughter’s name, is a type of deer, though we altered the spelling from roe. Her first word was moon, a nickname I now softly murmur to her in the quiet of the night. By morning, she’s often out watering plants or searching for beetles and moths. My son Theo, nicknamed bear, who I also call my sun, covers himself in dirt, his cheeks painted by the earth. My deer and my bear, my moon and my sun—my east and my west, my guiding compasses.

On weekends we wander through forested trails, stumbling across teeter totters—fallen logs balanced upon another one for mountain bikers or our kids. We hold their hands as they carefully traverse from one end to the other, with one end of the plank elevated high in the air before their tiny feet shift the balance, bringing it back to the ground. Back and forth, back and forth, only pausing to chase a butterfly that leads them to a raspberry bush, leaving their fingers and lips stained red with juice.

Shortly after our son was born, my husband and I decided to take our kids to a Buddhist temple not far from our home. With no other children in sight, we did our best to keep our four-year-old and three-month-old quiet amidst the humming and the drums. At the end of the service, we were met with warm and welcoming faces who reassured us that there were indeed other children who attended, including a children’s program upstairs, though many families were away on vacation for the summer. We thanked them and left, myself feeling slightly discouraged because things still felt too loud.

For years I told my first therapist that I felt destined to be a bhikṣuṇī living quietly in the forest, conversing only with the sun and the moon. Of course, with a family, that was no longer a feasible reality—merely a dream and an aspiration: to be surrounded by emptiness yet filled to the brim with everything life-giving. These days, I find myself more connected to this dream than ever, grateful that it has become a reality with my family by my side. Despite the occasional tantrums, we easily lose ourselves among the trees, feeling their breath, their sway and their embrace—a gentle silence more powerful than the bustling city streets.

I’ve always wondered why humans remain significant when, compared to the galaxies, they remain insignificant in size.

Yet I’ve always wondered why humans, insignificant compared to the galaxies, have so much power.

Perhaps our power should act as a gift, an offering, to the great goddess, Mother Nature, who both formed us and one day, will allow us to become one with her once more.

The sun kisses our faces, waking us up too early in the morning and for the first time I find myself longing for the winter, when I wake before the sun and drink my tea as the sky turns pink and orange, the sun rising in the East, my back to the West, the rivers flowing to the sea and the stars dimming until we’ll meet again in the evening and find ourselves cradled by dreams.

We point to the moon with our right hands, our faces to the North.

We remember our way home.