At Home in Nature is a compelling story of one family’s life among the rugged landscapes of British Columbia’s Coast Mountains, converting youthful ideals, raw land and a passion for the outdoors into a practical, off-grid homestead. The book is a gentle and philosophical memoir that focuses on living a life deeply rooted in the natural world, where citizens are connected to the planet and individuals work together to help, enhance and make the world a better — and sustainable — place.
“What is it about Canadian wilderness that is so important for us to defend?”
Since early childhood, I have been intuitively responsive to the ability of wild places to affect my feelings and state of mind. In the old country, the landscape was often beautiful because it had been “cultivated” for thousands of years by people (and sheep) who were more in harmony with nature, but its power was diluted and tamed in comparison to the pristine Canadian wilderness. The crags where we climbed were more powerful than the surrounding areas because they had not been worked over so much. By comparison, our home island on the B.C. coast, though relatively wild and beautiful, has been modified by logging and lacks the potency of the pristine landscape of the more remote, rugged and inaccessible parts of the B.C. Coast Range.
My first conscious experience of deep, uncompromised wilderness was in 1971, when the famous British climber, Doug Scott, and I met in a Cairngorm pub and devised a plan to climb clean granite rock walls somewhere far away from societal distractions. We wanted to experience the pure spirit of exploration and self-reliance free from the bureaucracy, commercialism and crowding of popular places such as Yosemite and Banff National Parks. We found that isolation in abundance in the mountains on Baffin Island in the eastern Canadian Arctic, where magnificent granite peaks, glaciers and treeless tundra bathe in the crystalline clarity of magic Arctic light. After spending six weeks in this pristine landscape with complete absence of societal noise and clutter, we became increasingly conscious not just of the pretty view but also of a subtle ambient presence, a vibration that interacted and resonated with our feelings and emotions. Beauty became love.
We learned that things went better when we paid attention to these feelings and tuned into the surroundings and each other; when we listened and read the natural signs with our body/minds open and free. Then meaningful coincidences (synchronicities) and intuitive hunches happened more frequently, assisting our judgment and critical decisions, especially those concerning navigation, timing, weather and avalanches. Conversely, things went badly when we were not paying complete attention to our surroundings and each other; when our minds and spirits were distracted and out of focus. Deep wilderness experience taught us that our well-being, safety and ability to survive depended on conscious awareness of our internal and external environs.
In Strathcona Park, on Vancouver Island, I discovered a unique and particularly powerful version of the hidden connectivity of wilderness ambience. In the alpine areas between the steep, forested valleys below and the barren tundra of the high peaks and glaciers above, an extensive web of interconnected ridges provided relatively accessible, multi-day hiking expeditions through exquisite pristine meadows with exotic flowers and shrubs and sparkling streams and small lakes.
A dramatic example of the way this subtle energy of the pristine landscape can inspire love and conscious awareness and can move and shake us was demonstrated by the political battle to save this magical wonderland from the ravages of heavy-metal mining in the late 1980s.
It all started for Laurie and me when we worked part time as wilderness guides for Jim Boulding at Strathcona Park Lodge and Outdoor Education Centre on Vancouver Island, leading hundreds of multi-day hiking journeys through the alpine paradise. Jim had been a great hunting and fishing guide, but when he discovered that killing game was not what his clients enjoyed, so much as the art of stalking (the state of mind of the hunter), he and his wife, Myrna, converted their hunting and fishing lodge into an outdoor education centre. Their mission was to teach people how to be more in tune with nature.
Jim was a big man with great charisma and a very commanding presence. You could say he had psychic power, with an uncanny shaman-like habit of thinking outside the box. Furthermore, he encouraged and instructed his staff to do likewise.
“The school classroom,” he said, “was an architectural expression of the box mentality, the root cause of most of the problems of modern society.”
Jim demonstrated the joy and power of sharing inspiration gained from interacting with the energy fields of the land in what he called “generosity of spirit.” When we share the “natural high” and the experience of “being in the zone,” the energy feeds on itself synergistically, and amazing things can and do happen. Examples of this synergy are manifest in the safety record of the wilderness trips and the spontaneous music and dancing, organic architecture, delicious wholesome food and hospitality of “the lodge.”
Jim’s creation of Strathcona Rural Resource Village was as close as I ever came to a manifestation of my own thesis: A village on the edge of a protected wilderness park providing services, facilities and information for visitors outside instead of reducing the wilderness value by developing inside the protected areas.
According to Jim, “there are two types of outdoorsmen: Happy Warriors versus Whiners and Bitchers.” I interpreted the latter to mean holding our own subliminal fears in abeyance by being fully focused and grounded in the moment and taking full responsibility for the consequences of our attitudes and behaviour.
Part of that responsibility, which he practised to a high degree himself, was what he called “stewardship of the land.” Jim and others had been fighting successive waves of despoliation of Strathcona Provincial Park by government-sanctioned industrial resource extraction, mostly without success, since its inception in 1911. When, in the mid-1980s, the B.C. government of the day announced plans to open up 25 per cent of B.C. parks, including Strathcona, for more mining and logging, on top of financial difficulties of running the lodge, it all became too much, and Jim succumbed to pancreatic cancer. The Orwellian vision of what such government policy might mean for the future of society moved me to pledge to Jim, in his final days, that I would do everything I could to continue his opposition to such a world.
Fortunately, I was not alone in my pledge of allegiance to Jim and the park. My old friend Stevey Smith and his wife Marlene also picked up Jim’s baton and vowed to run with it. They too had spent many days hiking in the park and shared the love and inspiration for the subtle vibrations of the deep wilderness environs. Marlene described that feeling as “having your spiritual batteries charged.”
Like David confronting Goliath, we never imagined we could win the battle, but neither could we stand by and watch our mother being raped; we were compelled to do something. So we started a citizen’s action organization called “Friends of Strathcona Park” which soon enlisted huge support from all the communities surrounding the park.
A Courtenay contingent organized a rally, attended by 600 people, with speakers emphasizing the spiritual, physical and mental-health value of wilderness, as well as clean drinking water. Others spoke to the economic value of tourism. A Campbell River group organized a peaceful “sit in” that blocked the highway through the park and temporarily stopped the trucks coming out of the existing mine. This “direct action” attracted the attention of the media and the event was broadcast on provincewide prime-time TV news. At a huge demonstration on the lawn of the legislature, in Victoria, 50 blue herons circled overhead.
When “exploratory drilling” started, we organized a permanent camp vigil near the site, even though it was midwinter with challenging weather conditions. On weekends we formed a human chain around the drill rig, preventing its operation. When the police arrived to remove us, there were volunteers who refused to leave. They were arrested and taken off to jail.
All this drama was captured on live TV over a period of several months, and each time we had the opportunity to broadcast our message. We taught the cameraman how to keep warm and dry, and even he was inspired by being present on the land. That might have come across on the TV, because the sight of all of these decent-looking people being arrested caught the public’s imagination, and when they heard our message, support for our cause escalated dramatically. Particularly effective in this regard was the sight and sound, as each arrestee was dragged away by the police, of one of one our elders, a very dignified old lady, Ruth Masters, playing, “O Canada, we stand on guard for thee” (slightly off key), on her harmonica.
When public-opinion polls indicated that as many as 75 per cent of British Columbians wanted their parks protected, the government backed off and withdrew the policy of downgrading not only Strathcona but all B.C. parks. The subsequent government increased the proportion of the land area of the province in parks from five per cent to 13 per cent and consolidated their protected status.
All this did not come about by chance or good luck. There was a phenomenal amount of voluntary hard work, many sleepless nights, vast numbers of phone calls, strained family relationships, time away from work and meetings, endless meetings. Tremendous sacrifices were made. Decisions were made by consensus, and we used the First Nations method of keeping order by passing the speaking stick. We used Jim Boulding leadership techniques we had honed in the mountains to promote and maintain group synergy — when to push hard and go for it and when to back off and listen.
Fortunately, as the protest escalated, new leaders emerged to help relieve the burnout syndrome. We received fantastic support from the environmental network and First Nations. One Native elder addressing a rally in the park said: “If we destroy our environment, we destroy ourselves.”
Throughout it all, we were unquestionably guided and motivated by the unifying effect of the love we all shared for the land. Those of us who led this rare environmental victory have no hesitation in attributing the success to the survival imperative of Gaia (the living organism of the earth and its biosphere) expressing itself through our unconditional love for the park, which then synergistically resonated with the collective consciousness of British Columbians.
Excerpted from At Home in Nature: A Life of Unknown Mountains and Deep Wilderness, Rocky Mountain Books, ©2017 Rob Wood
