When I think of the wilderness I am immediately turned off. I don’t know if my dislike of the “outdoors” comes from some bad outdoor experiences when I was child, or from just a more general appreciation of human creation over the “natural” way of things. As a child I was forced to like to go camping and hiking. I lived in the mountains of Colorado and being outside was something that one just did, and did it with joy. I really did despise every camping trip, ski trip, and outdoor excursion. I would much rather have been with a book, on my bed, listening to the birds through the window.
I have, as I’ve grown up, been more apt to be outside in the woods, but not really for long periods of time. I’ve gone camping at camp grounds and tent cabins where I can bring the Colman stove and take a shower down the road for a couple of bucks. I enjoy hiking for the sake of exercise and so I can eat a really high-fat dinner and feel like I earned it. All in all the wilderness remains just that to me, the wilderness; it is a place I may stick a toe or two into, but not a place I can call home.
I will tell you, however, that just because I don’t find much joy in the wilderness, doesn’t mean that I don’t like the unknown. It doesn’t mean that I don’t like to explore and be in situations that are uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want to test my wits against forces larger than my simple human self. I feel sometimes that because I don’t want to be in the great outdoors that I am seen as having sold my soul the modernist company store. This is greatly the case in liberal religious environments where there is strong move to see God in nature. In truth I see God much more in the human ways we’ve constructed the world, than in any star or blade of grass.
This intimate truth reflects a large part of my personal theology; a belief system that knows that God is in us. Therefore, when I see the human hubbub on 96th and Broadway, a conversation between mother and son, or a high-speed train rumbling through a station, I know I am in the presence of the Holy.
