In Nature

From the top of a sand dune, the highest point on the beach, I rotate 360, and from every angle I see nature unimpeded by human progress. The Atlantic ocean in front of me, a tent camping area behind me, and inland marsh extending beyond the horizon. No concrete. No machines. No sounds save those from nature. My mind is clear, and here at Assateague, a national park where horses roam free and mosquitoes engage in relentless feast, I feel a sense of peace that I’ve not felt in some time.

Despite a spiritual experience in the early morning that took a squeegee to my third eye, my head is sober and fully connected to what Nobel biologist E.O. Wilson describes as “biophilia,” the belief that humans need to commune directly with nature in order to keep from going insane.

The needs to survey nature from a vantage point, seek environments where there are few other animals like you, explore nature and get lost/hide within it, and to experience synchronicity with the heartbeat of the natural world are all theorized by Wilson to be common traits among mammals. A millennial history of human animal behavior is coded in our genetics—a history of our relationship with nature that is long, and unlocks the mysteries of our biological need to maintain that relationship. From the peak of this dune, intently watching the wind blow grains of sand between my feet into constantly shifting patterns, I understand this need.

The next day I take a walk down the beach with a friend. The weather draws people to the shore, and many seem friendly in a way uncommon to city streets, but many more seem out of place, like the families which try to recreate their living rooms on the beach, or the three fat women on folding chairs, embedded in the sand like massive sea turtles. They smoke cigarettes with foul disinterest, as if unaware of their perch on the edge of paradise. Their bodies are present, but I see that their minds are still at home in Marlboro country, sitting Shiva for their lost spirit, circled around a card table baked with fluorescent lighting and beer can condensation, blankets imprinted with “Dogs Playing Poker” laid across their varicose veined legs. I don't think they've heard of E.O. Wilson.

My friend and I turn back when these small pockets of humanity begin to give way to an endless war party of SUVs entrenched on the front line of surf in a stalwart expression of dominance, foolishly attempting to intimidate the ocean in a battle of wills. I think of Henry Miller, who once proclaimed American society to be the “great air-conditioned nightmare,” and wonder if he ever thought we would take it this far, where we slavishly haul it on our backs when escaping to search for that warm place in our dreams.

On the walk back, I’m charmed by the children who attack the surf with matched intensity, only to crumble, if unwillingly, with great pleasure and no malice. The ocean, undulating and deep, passionate and treacherous, is life itself, and I’m amused that the children seem to have a better handle on it than anyone. I want to run headlong in to the surf and join them.

*****

Resort: to go out, leave, escape. This is the definition my dictionary provides me. Millions of Americans run screaming from their cities in search of this promise of escape, in search of freedom from the prescription of their daily lives. They’re told that the resort fulfills this promise, yet most fugitives don’t account for the immense distance that the resort places between them and freedom.

The irony is immense: they travel a great distance in place and time to escape and relax, but they don’t escape from anything, and they don’t seem particularly relaxed. They just go further and deeper into the source of what inspired the vacation in the first place: manufactured and highly structured life. What is marketed as escape is not a path to freedom, but a further deadening of it. Still a spectator, they pull their beach chair to the lip of the all-you-can-eat buffet and further distance themselves from life—their own thoughts and movements, silence, and the specter of mortality.

My confederates seek escape from the blistering sun for a few hours, so we drive through the strip mall/entertainment complex/high-rise human warehouse sensory fuck that is Bethany Beach and Ocean City. Everywhere I look, there are people with slack faces—bored—imprisoned by their consumption and only tangentially aware of each other, their desperate pursuit of pleasure displacing the deeper enjoyments of affection and friendship, their sparkling desires obscuring their view of the stars. Room service, a heated pool, free HBO, cheap margaritas, and a million miniature golf courses can’t bridge the chasm between a man and the needs of his soul, yet he tries, and goes home exhausted.

****

I ride the escalator up from the metro, and for the first time in many, many Mondays, I don’t feel like a foot soldier in the army of the walking dead. The volume on the world is turned low, and my thoughts are calm and and unlayered. Meetings take place under water, I multi-task at a speed considerably less than the speed of sound, and I’m consciously aware of my breath. In spite of my immediate surroundings, diligent work, and an uncommonly zen focus on the moment, I find myself somewhere on the eastern shore of Maryland, standing on top of a sand dune.