Seeing Nature

"The world is big and wondrous, full of odd sights and strange beasts and weird noises and charmingly demented people with great stories to tell and (despite the increasing scarcity) more than a few wild places...."

Thus, in the introduction to his book Wild Thoughts From Wild Places, does David Quammen describe his livelihood as a scribe of the natural world. Some of my spare moments recently (those moments when my thoughts haven’t been occupied with pining for my lonely bicycle) have been spent enjoying this the latest of David Quammen’s excellent books. For those of you who are not familiar with him, David Quammen was, for many years, one of the columnists for Outside Magazine, and his columns and books have occupied many a pleasurable evening in my humble abode. And they have inspired me to get out and look at, actually see, the wonderful world that we live in..

Quammen isn’t your normal, run-of-the-mill writer. No, if he had been such he probably would have lost my interest many years ago. Instead, he writes of the more mundane things that occupy our world, and through his writing makes the mundane sublime.

For instance, one of my favorite columns described a houseguest that he had living in his office. In one of his desk drawers, actually. It was a spider, and Quammen was the first to exclaim that he got the heebie-jeebies even thinking about those eight-legged creatures, let alone sharing his work space with one. Yet, he began to observe and describe the little beast, starting with the fact that all spiders have eight eyes (mounted in different locations depending on the species, such as on the legs -- betcha didn’t know that, didya?) and going on to talk about the life cycles of spiders, how common they are, and how they affect our daily lives. After reading the story you couldn’t look at a spider in quite the same way again. And the story almost inspired me to go out in the evening with a flashlight and lie down on the ground, shining the light so as to catch the reflections from all those eight-eyed and eight-legged creatures. Try it some night when the weather is warmer.

Quammen would make a great cyclist. You have to admit that, whether we call ourselves mountain bikers or roadies, beginner or expert, athlete or tourist, the one common denominator to our sport is that we do it in the outdoors. (We won’t discuss indoor trainers, as beneficial as they may be. Spinning indoors just isn’t quite cycling, in Yr. Obd’t Svt.’s humble opinion.) But how many of us really observe the outdoors as we ride through it?

During my last vacation I fortunately was able to attend Tom Baker’s marvelous ride, picnic, and "awards ceremony" for the Test of Truth Time Trial Series. Tom planned an unplanned ride to enjoy the autumn scenery and observe as many of the turning leaves as possible, and the ride helped me rediscover why cycling is so enjoyable. In addition to the health benefits, both physical and mental, there is an inherent joy in gliding smoothly through the countryside that we in East Tennessee have been so blessed with. We also have the opportunity to occasionally meet some of those "charmingly demented people with great stories to tell," especially when we are on tour. How often have you struck up a conversation with a perfect stranger during a rest stop, just because you happen to be riding that anachronistic mode of transportation, a bicycle? Or how about the conversations you’ve had with your fellow riders? Have you come home with some great stories?

So next time you take a ride, give yourself a goal. Tell yourself that you are going to not just look at the passing countryside, but you are going to actually see the scenery as you pass through it, see how the different parts of nature meld into the whole, and how you are a part, albeit insignificant, of that whole. But don’t work too hard toward your goal -- remember, you’re here to enjoy yourself as you experience the world that surrounds you.

And HFDF (Have Fun, Don’t Fall) John