Walking to Stills Landing with Thoreau, Darwin and Nietzsche

The walk to Stills Landing and back was twelve miles in the wilderness, in a place a friend of mine calls “tall and uncut.” His expression is an allusion to Thoreau’s use of those words to describe the forests were he liked to walk – a places not transformed by humanity.

Stills Landing is named for someone who attempted to settle there in the 1940’s. The homestead failed.

The beauty and benevolence of wilderness is deceptive. The harmony is illusion. The river runs cold through Whitewater Canyon, bears hunt the deer, and my survival, as well as that of bears and deer, depends on me leaving this tall and uncut place before night.

I want to be deceived – I love the illusion. And yet, my disbelief in the terror of existence, my disbelief that nature is sublime, is hard to suspend.

Thoreau, Darwin and Nietzsche, each in his own way, confirmed the terror. I think Thoreau hoped for transcendence and feared the nihilistic boredom of civilization more than he feared places tall and uncut. Darwin faced the terror stoically – accepting it as it is and admiring the grandeur of the terror and the deception. Nietzsche faced it heroically – acknowledging the power such terror has over us, but resisting, not with suspension of disbelief, but with a raised fist. It is as if Thoreau said, “Let it not be so;” Darwin said, “so be it;” and Nietzsche said, “Nevertheless, thou must reckon with me.” Nietzsche was like Job.

As for me, I guess I am much like Thoreau – I walk in the wilderness and return to the city with hope renewed. I admire Nietzsche, and yet I love the wilderness too much to raise my fist. Let it be – tall and uncut, and terrifying.

Whitewater Canyon

We crossed the river about a dozen times, hopping from rock to rock above the rapids, but at one place, at the base of Paw Hill, the only way to cross was to wade. That will be the only crossing that I will remember, the only one that will matter.

Cool water matters on a warm day. Bare feet on cold rocks in rushing water matter.

I remember wading across a river in the desert mountains a few years ago – the cold water, the soft sand.

Rock hopping above the rapids is good, but not enough. It is wading that matters. One must step into the river to live, step into the river to remember.