Remembering Home

Why the greatest preparation for the wilderness may not be physical conditioning, but remembering what we have carried from the very beginning.

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This month my son Danny and I will begin another journey into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The itinerary sounds straightforward enough. A long drive to the airport. A flight west to Las Vegas. Several hours across the Mojave Desert to Bishop, California.

The following morning I’ll shoulder my backpack and begin a solo hike from North Lake Campground, climbing through Paiute Pass and into Humphreys Basin until I reach Upper Desolation Lake. There I’ll establish Base Camp and spend the night beside the lake, waiting for Danny to arrive the following day. While I’m hiking into the basin, Danny will spend the day in Yosemite climbing Mount Dana, helping his body remember what thin air feels like before joining me the next day. The following morning, Danny plans to leave Base Camp before sunrise and summit Mount Humphreys, topping out at 13,390 feet.

My plan is different.

For the first time in many years, I am not going to the mountains to hike long-distances or stand on a summit. I am going there to sit beside an alpine lake, where altitude, silence, and solitude may help me remember what the noise of ordinary life has caused me to forget.

What the Sipsey Wilderness Taught Me

A few weeks ago, Carleigh and I attempted a three-day backpacking trip through Alabama’s Sipsey Wilderness.

It wasn’t intended to be the adventure of the year. It was a shakedown trip. Backpackers use that phrase for a simple reason. Before committing yourself to a demanding expedition, you test your equipment, your systems, and yourself. Better to discover what isn’t working close to home than halfway through the High Sierra. The trip accomplished exactly what it was meant to accomplish. My equipment was adequate. My systems still worked. But I also learned something much harder to admit.

I wasn’t ready.

Years ago, I could shoulder a heavy pack and trust that experience would carry me through. Sipsey reminded me that experience cannot substitute for conditioning. The Sierra doesn’t care how many miles I’ve walked in the past. It responds only to the strength, endurance, and humility I bring today.

That realization was disappointing. Even frustrating. Mostly, it was a gift. The mountain had already begun teaching me before I’d even seen it.

Preparing the Body –  A Sierra Plan

Since returning from Sipsey, my preparation has become intentional. I’ve designed a conditioning program around this specific journey. Not a generic fitness plan. A Sierra plan. Every workout has a purpose. Leg strength for endless switchbacks. Core and back stability for carrying a loaded backpack over uneven ground. Shoulder strength for the weight I’ll carry hour after hour. Most of all, cardiovascular endurance. Hiking from nine thousand feet to nearly twelve thousand feet asks something different of the body. Every step requires just a little more from the lungs, the heart, and the will.

There is nothing glamorous about this preparatory work. Most days it consists of committed repetition. Sweat. Soreness. Another workout if I feel like it or not. Another opportunity to become slightly more prepared than I was yesterday. No one applauds physical preparation. But the mountain notices.

Preparing the Inner Life

As I’ve been training my body, I’ve found myself wondering whether the inner life follows a similar pattern. We rarely drift into wisdom. We prepare for it. We don’t accidentally become more patient. More kind. More attentive. More compassionate. More peaceful. These qualities are quietly cultivated through practices that often appear ordinary: another walk down a country road, another evening of reading before sleeping, another decision to choose stillness instead of hurry.

Originally, I planned to carry Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching with me to Base Camp. But over the past few evenings another companion quietly stepped forward.

William Wordsworth.

More specifically, a few lines from his Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. I found myself returning again and again to these lines:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
                      Hath had elsewhere its setting,
                         And cometh from afar:
                      Not in entire forgetfulness,
                      And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
                      From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

William Wordsworth

I’ve read those lines before.

This time…

They read me. What if Base Camp is more than a place of refuge? What if it is a place of remembrance? What if the reason we need Base Camp is because we’ve spent so much of life forgetting?

Finding Base Camp

There’s an old Hasidic story about a poor man who repeatedly dreamed of a treasure buried beneath a bridge in a distant city. Believing the dream, he set out on a long journey. When he finally reached the bridge, a guard noticed him lingering nearby and asked what he was doing. Embarrassed, the traveler told him about the dream. The guard laughed.

“If dreams were worth following,” he said, “I would leave immediately for a village I’ve never seen. I dreamed there was a treasure buried beneath the hearth of a man with your very name.”

The traveler stood speechless. The guard had unknowingly described his own home. He returned, dug beneath the hearth, and found the treasure. The journey had not created the treasure. It had simply taught him where to look.

I’ve been wondering if the wilderness works the same way. Perhaps we don’t travel into the mountains to discover peace. Perhaps we travel far enough, and become quiet enough, to remember the peace we’ve been carrying all along.

Home Base

Backpackers understand something we seldom think about. Everything needed for Base Camp comes from somewhere else.

The shelter.

The sleeping bag.

The stove.

The food.

The map.

The compass.

The first-aid kit.

Nothing essential is waiting on the mountain. Everything essential is chosen beforehand. Packed beforehand. Carried from home.

That realization has quietly begun reshaping my understanding of the inner life. If we carry Base Camp with us, doesn’t that suggest there is also a Home Base? Doesn’t every Base Camp point back toward a home from which it came?

Perhaps the wilderness doesn’t create the deepest parts of us. Perhaps it uncovers them. Perhaps our conscience, our capacity for love, truth, beauty, courage, wonder, and compassion are not inventions of the trail. Perhaps they are provisions we carried with us from the very beginning. Perhaps Base Camp is where we remember. Not who the world says we are. Not the roles we’ve accumulated. Not the successes we’ve achieved. Not the failures we’ve survived. But something quieter. Something deeper. Something that has accompanied us through every wilderness we’ve ever walked.

Perhaps…

The wilderness does not give us Base Camp. It teaches us how to find and tend the one we have been carrying all along.

Over the next weeks I’ll continue preparing. Strengthening my legs. Steadying my breathing. Lightening my pack. Reading slowly. Paying attention. And wondering whether the greatest preparation isn’t for the climb ahead, but for the quiet hours beside an alpine lake, where I hope to remember that Base Camp has been traveling with me from the very beginning.

And perhaps…

to catch a glimpse of the Home from which it came.