“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.”
—William Blake
Thank the gods for Teddy Roosevelt and the brilliant foresight he had to protect America’s most important landscapes when he signed the Antiquities Act of 1906, thereby creating our national park system. Had he not done that singular act, surely the American timber, mining, fossil fuel, and other extractive industries would have decimated our landscape long before any family had the opportunity to pack up the kids and the camping equipment and go visit the magnificent giant Sequoias, watch Old Faithful blow his top in Yellowstone, gasp in amazement at the edge of the Grand Canyon, walk between ancient Joshua Trees, navigate giant stone Arches, visit the Alaskan Arctic Refuge, or experience any of the approximately 450 national parks that we still have access to.
In contrast to this, we still have many ignoble, corrupt politicians and special interest lobbyists who would try to steal our public lands and sell them off to various corporate interests at a fraction of their value. They do this while simultaneously deregulating these same industries, allowing them to pollute our air, land, and water with more oil drilling, fracking, strip mining, and clear cutting of forests down to the bare dirt. I’ve seen it with my own eyes all over the world because that’s what these un-men will do to our Earth, given the opportunity.
Having grown up in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, I am frequently drawn to our national parks when I’m on a road trip or tour, especially when I am in other countries with forests, jungles, mountains, deserts, and any place that cries out that the land is alive and full of spirit. If it is at all possible to stop, even briefly to visit these places, then we are stopping.
Wild nature was the original temple for man’s earliest spiritual practices, whether it was a grove of oak trees to the Celts, a sacred mesa to the American Indians, an Apu on the top of a mountain to the Inca, a river system that supplied everything to an Amazon village, or a vast rock formation that represented the ancestors of the Australian Aboriginal. All of it was sacred, intuitively understood, and revered by the people. It was only after the onset of colonization, missionization, and the corporate takeover of indigenous lands that so many of these forests, mountains, and waterways were pillaged and destroyed in the name of god and commerce. The European oak groves were cut down and churches were built on the razed ground; the Spanish conquistadors looted and destroyed the Inca temples; and the Brazilian government continues to destroy huge swaths of the Amazon Rainforest, displacing millions of Brazilian Indians in the process. When the British colonists seized Aboriginal territories, they mirrored the same brutality the United States exacted on the American Indians; and when China seized the sovereign nation of Tibet for its vast water resources, they massacred hundreds of thousands of Tibetans in an act of genocide. These heinous acts, and countless others, were some of the original misogynies on the planet. Horrific as it seems, they still continue to this day.
My new religion is to honor the Earth, in the Olde Ways, in the same way that ancient cultures saw the masculine role as the protector of the Earth, not the destroyer of it. It is one of the last truly honest spiritual practices left and therefore I’m honoring it in every way I possibly can.
When I walk in the woods, in the desert, or in the mountains, I feel a deep connection to the Earth and to myself. I’m sure this universal connection to the landscape is felt by people around the world whenever they walk in the natural environments of their own native lands. I have hiked some of the highest peaks in the Olympic and Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest, including a few in the Peruvian Andes that crested above 15,000 feet. There were times when I returned from a hike with music in my head, and that music eventually became entire albums of songs. I believe this is because the Earth is always communicating with us, it just manifests in different ways for each of us.
To be quite honest, I feel no joy in seeing a new freeway overpass, another skyscraper, or a sprawling urban landscape with no direction. I do, however, love a well-planned city, especially an ancient one that has had the good sense to preserve its historic architecture. The modern American city, however, with its generic strip malls, cheaply built apartment buildings, and the decaying infrastructure of neglected bridges and roads—well, it just makes me want to go back to the forest.
One of the places I have visited that seems to have all of the best qualities of urban life meshed with a natural love of the landscape is the country of New Zealand. Perhaps because of the strong influence of the indigenous Maori people, who have a deep reverence for the land and sea, New Zealand seems to be instilled with a sense of the modern while still keeping its connection to nature. The fact that I have a few friends on those 2 southern islands has allowed me to visit and even record music there a few times. On one occasion, I had an incredible experience on the open sea.
It was 1999 and I was visiting a friend in Auckland when some mutual friends arrived and, sizing up my tall frame, inquired as to whether I had any sailing experience? I did, I replied, having sailed a bit around the Puget Sound in my youth. I didn’t tell them that our family sailboat was an aged, leaky affair that cost a thousand dollars, was named “The Frog,” and probably sailed no faster than the amphibian it was named after. However, the fact that I had sailed at all was enough for these chaps to sign me up to join their crew for an America’s Cup qualifying race the following day.
I can’t begin to describe the competitive history of the America’s Cup race, but suffice it to say that it is THE greatest race in the history of ocean sailing. To even make it on a qualifying team is a huge honor—I was just hoping I’d be up for the task. This epic battle of man versus the sea is quite a story, and my version of it went something like this.
The following morning I arrived at our sailboat’s berth in the main harbor of Auckland, known by its Maori name, Waitemata Harbor. The boat itself had an experimental keel that could be extended or retracted, depending on the speed and angle of the boat’s trajectory through the water. I had never heard of this technology on a sailboat but I found it intriguing. We were in a qualifying race, of which we had to finish in the top three in order to earn points for the America’s Cup Finals. Because of my 6′ 2″ height, I was selected to be the one who cleared the backstay every time the boat tacked, the backstay being the metal cable that connects the top of the mainmast to the stern of the boat, much like a giant, stabilizing bow. This particularly strenuous job meant that every time we tacked and the boom was about to swing to the other side, I had to loosen and yank the backstay cable as if I was drawing a giant bow, allowing the boom to clear, and then retightening the backstay to its original, taught position.
We motored out of our berth and out to the starting line, now under sail, tacking back and forth strategically until the starting gun fired. And then we were off, not in first place, but near the front of the squadron. We were racing against several other international teams—Japanese, Australian, British, other New Zealanders, and the Americans who seemed more like enemy pirates. Other countries were there as well, and it appeared to be about a dozen boats in the race. Their crews had uniform sailing suits, which matched their sleek multimillion-dollar yachts, their tanned faces and perfect haircuts making the ensemble complete. By comparison, we were the salty underdogs of the pack.
Our team was wearing cut off jeans, t-shirts, flip-flops, and not one article of matching clothing between us. We had long hair, course beards, and even coarser language—but we were tough. As we sailed along at an enormously fast pace (certainty the fastest I’ve ever moved across the water) jokes and laughter filled the boat, and every time we tacked, I pulled on the backstay like a Welsh bowman firing arrows at the British invaders. All was going well, so well in fact, that cans of beer began to be passed around to the crew, including cigarettes that the port side wincher would light and pass down the line. Someone passed me a can of beer and a smoke, both of which I took with my right hand because my left arm was snaked around the last bit of fencing on the stern. Behind me lay open, churning water that we were leaving fast behind in our wake.
“Don’t worry,” the wincher shouted. “If you fall overboard one of the chase boats will pick you up!” I nodded silently and sipped the warm beer and puffed on the cig—I was a temporary Kiwi after all.
As the race progressed out into the ocean, we moved closer to the front of the pack, the result of our skipper’s nautical strategy. In the process, we left many of our perfectly suited/haircutted competitors in the distance. Our experimental keel was working like a charm, being periodically extended or retracted as the skipper tested its design to maximum effect. As we neared the finish line we could see that we were going to finish near the top—straight on, full ahead, and there we were, coming in third, which earned our qualifying points towards the America’s Cup Finals.
Cheers echoed across the water as we motored back to Waitemata Harbor, but just moments after our sails were stowed, an enormously loud, wrenching howl emerged from the bottom of the boat, making it and all of us shudder. The boat suddenly listed to its side as we shouted out expletives—the experimental keel had sheered off from the bottom of the boat and sunk to the bottom of the harbor. Had it happened a few minutes earlier when we were under full sail at high speed, our boat would have certainly cartwheeled across the water and very likely killed some of us. It didn’t, quite luckily, and we were able to crawl to our berth, after which we celebrated our underdog victory at a nearby pub.
Whatever happened to the boat, its keel, or whether our team raced in the final America’s Cup I don’t know. I flew back to Seattle a few days later and didn’t return to New Zealand for another 15 years, but what I learned from racing across the ocean and climbing in the mountains is this:
It’s not how far you run, how high you climb, or how fast you go. What matters is that you accept the challenge to do so in the first place. Never, and I mean never, say no to an adventure when it calls you because you will regret it for the rest of your life. Make every effort to get out into Nature—the mountains, the sea, the jungles, and the deserts, as these are the original places of the greatest spiritual traditions. Feel the immense beauty of the Earth, her powerful winds, her changing moods, and even her danger. If you are able to make it to the destination you aim for, whether it’s a mountaintop, an ocean, or simply to the end of the trail, then that is an even greater success.
What matters most, is that you step away from safety and into the adventure of life.