At a Wandering Pace

I remembered a John Muir quote incorrectly. I thought he said that nothing could be seen of nature when we’re moving at 40 miles an hour because everything becomes a bewildering blur. 

When people arrive in Yosemite today, after driving 60-70 miles an hour for four hours across the Central Valley, up through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and into the valley, they do tend to stagger out of their cars dazed. At those speeds, the landscape has been a blur. Trees flash by the windows as we focus on staying on the winding road. We would be able to see much more if we slowed down to 40, but Muir didn’t think this is enough. 

I thought Muir was berating people who arrived in the valley by stagecoach, zipping over the new dirt roads, or taking the train to El Portal at the breakneck speed of 40 miles an hour instead of taking their time by riding horses over trails. Muir himself took things even slower by taking several weeks to walk the 200 miles from Oakland. (Wendell Berry wrote an insightful essay on adjusting to the pace of the nature in “An Entrance to the Woods.”) Yesterday I ran across this quote again. It doesn’t say 40 miles an hour.

 What the quote really says is 40 miles A DAY. 

Harkening back to my time as a Boy Scout, I know that a good hiking pace is 4 miles an hour over gently rolling terrain. Ten hours at this pace would make a full day. You can see a great deal more of nature going 4 miles an hour rather than 40.

Yet even at this pace, if you keep to it hour after hour, especially in the mountains, you have no time to explore what is around you, what catches your eye. You can’t investigate the open patch of sunlight 100 yards off to the side in the forest, or check out the sound of running water to see if it’s a creek, a waterfall, or a pool that would be ideal for cooling your hot feet. If you are trying to get somewhere, moving at 4 miles an hour, hour after hour, you are still moving too fast to experience the landscape you’re traveling through.

So where does this leave us?

When you find yourself outdoors in a beautiful place, take your time. Savor what is there. Do not hurry on to get to some place else. Do you want to experience the transcendence of nature or get to some destination? Linger in places that get your attention. Stay in the moment until it’s over, and then go on to the next. This is also important for what we do in the rest of our lives, like taking time in the conversations we have with others and letting them deepen.

Life is not a linear experience. Our goal is not to get from here to there, with the there being death. Life is a collection of experiences we have along the trail, places where we linger and explore, places that we come to cherish.

Not all who wander are lost. — Tolkien