Describing the Indescribable

I went on a two and a half hour hike today in northwest DC’s Rock Creek Park, the sort of outing I used to snobbishly turn my nose up at, back before I was a car-less grad student. If I was unable to drive to the Appalachians, I preferred not to go hiking at all – this despite living a few minutes’ walk from a tract of undeveloped woodlands twice the size of Central Park. Over the years, and with the prodding of being a poor car-less grad student (and the prodding of my girlfriend), I have stopped letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Rock Creek lets me get some nature time in every weekend, and it’s a damn fine park.

As it turns out, being in nature is empirically good for you. Outside magazine recently had a great piece on the growing body of scientific research on the health benefits of spending time in the woods. In a nutshell, being in nature seems to improve nearly every health indicator, from blood pressure to cancer to mental health. Even sitting in front of a window looking out at plants measurably lowers stress. The Japanese even have a term for hanging out in the woods that captures the experience perfectly – “forest bathing.”

Forest bathing is pretty much exactly what a two-hour hike in Rock Creek accomplishes. You simply feel better, and even a short hike provides you with the pleasures of walking a trail – rounding a bend, hearing wind in the trees, and cresting a ridge, for example. The entrance to Rock Creek Park gives one the sense of endless possibilities. As my buddy Jeff said, the Glover Road entrance “feels like you’re walking into Oz.” I know what he means, but at the same time I’m not really sure what Oz is like. This is an unending difficulty of hiking: how do you convey an experience that cannot be put into words?


I starting trying to do this while glancing through some old Colorado photos on a lazy Sunday morning, over orange juice and espresso. In 2008 Emily and I went on a backpacking trip with a couple of college friends in the Weminuche Wilderness area in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. The Weminuche was Oz, if Oz was a big brawny thicket of mountains and mesas that kicks your ass. Our Weminuche pictures captured a number of feelings that I think are central to why people love forests and mountains. Below I’ve added a few examples, illustrated by pretty Weminuche pictures. Feelings like this have drawn people to the wilderness for as long as civilization has removed wildness from our daily lives.

The feeling of walking along an airy ridge overlooking mountain ridges stretching to the horizon:

 

The lovely feeling of traveling through semi-open parkland. Apparently humans are hardwired to like savannah:

The experience of emerging from the woods into a big meadow:

And finally, that hanging-on-the-edge-of-the-world feeling. This one is from Mount Yale, not the Weminuche, but what the heck:

I started this post with the intent of articulating what it's like to be in the wilderness. Given that I've fallen back on pictures, I think it's still impossible. I have a feeling that hikers will know exactly what I'm talking about and others might not. The only way to convey that experience, seemingly, is to take someone hiking.