Tree hugger

Yes, I wear sensible shoes

I am nuts about nature. Getting out-of-doors is central to my spirituality.

I find that somewhat cringey to write.

I have often been put off by people who profess a nature spirituality. Too often it felt like they put on a mask or “spiritual” demeanor. Kind of woo-woo, you know? (Not that I don’t have plenty of woo-woo of my own.)

What I mean is that, for myself, without being outside, my spirit shrivels. My spirit hungers and thirsts for trees and air and deer poop. Fashion and style pioneer Andre Leon Talley once said his eyes were starved for beauty; so does my spirit.

This is relatively new for me. Although I grew up skiing and camping and hiking in the Pacfic Northwest, those trips were more irregular than not. Plus I was kind of a lost kid and not able to root my being. Then, while on sabbatical from my church work, I took a course with Confluence Formation’s Aram Mitchell , Spiritual Formation in the Wild.

Bam! I was hooked. I was entangled. I learned I was entangled.

Three months later I left parish ministry altogether.

Six months later I began the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy’s training to be a forest therapy guide.

Previously I wrote about my experience of “call.” Though there was an element of being drawn out of human institutions, what I experience now is a welcome. Certainly I can get myself injured clambering over a nurse log or stung by a wasp or saddened by a dead deer. Wilderness isn’t any safer than church, I just have a lot more respect for its risks. I may get eat up by mosquitos but they are just trying to survive – church members who make stinging comments about my body are not.

This morning when I walked the dogs I had a stiff wind right into my face. I was irritated for a full 20 minutes, until we turned back. In that instant I felt so glad to have made it to another morning. I didn’t have any epiphanic encounters, simply felt alive. And in this world that is both dying and that wants so many people dead, that is the most powerful spiritual practice of all.