Living in the Woods, Part 1

by Chuck Hall

In my latest book, Green Circles: A Sustainable Journey from the Cradle to the Grave, I devoted a chapter to my experiences living in the woods of the Appalachian foothills. At that time I had gone into the woods on a quest of self-discovery. I built a small cabin on a three-acre parcel I owned, and lived off the natural resources around me. As I became adjusted to this lifestyle, I noticed that my perceptions about the world underwent several permanent and life-altering changes. I learned a great deal about myself, about the natural world around me, and about what it means to live as a spiritual being having a human experience.

A lot of people began their spiritual journeys by going off into the woods. Buddha did it, Jesus did it, Mohammed did it, Moses did it, the Native Americans did it, and so did most of the great spiritual leaders throughout history. There is something about seeing the wild places firsthand that awakens our deeper, more intimate and personal levels of awareness.

Science in recent years has begun studying the psychological aspects of wilderness experiences. In a 2005 study, van den Berg & Heijne researched some of these characteristics. The study, Fear versus fascination: An exploration of emotional responses to natural threats, explains that there are two basic types of attentional focus: focus and fascination. Focus is the type of attention we experience most often in artificial environments. Human hands make most of the things we see indoors. Since we evolved in the wilderness, but have only been living in artificial environments for a few thousand years, our brains are wired to be ‘on guard’ in unfamiliar surroundings. The more primitive parts of our brains recognize artificial places as somehow alien. Because of this, we tend to use more energy to focus our attention while indoors in order to avoid these man-made distractions. Fascination is the type of attention we tend to experience more outdoors. The deeper, older parts of our brains recognize natural environments as something familiar, so we tend to use less mental resources for focusing attention. This means that more mental energy is available to generate more meditative states. So unless a bear is chasing you, you’re calmer and more relaxed in the woods or on a beach. Serenity is a prerequisite to spiritual events, so experiencing nature is highly conducive to spiritual awareness.

While nature helps you to achieve serenity much more easily, it’s hard to be serene when you’re cold and hungry. Many of the people who’ve read my book have written to ask about the practical aspects of living in the wilderness. They want to seek their own spirituality in nature, but they’re not sure how they would manage to survive in the meantime, so I thought I’d address some of the more mundane tasks of having your own Walden experience. Next week we’ll look at how to prepare yourself for your own journey of discovery in the wilderness.