What I Have Learned from Nature by Grant Mincy Some of my fondest childhood memories are with my parents hiking around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One memory is particularly vivid. I was six and on the trail to Abrams Falls after a summer rain moved through the forest. The sun was just again peaking through the canopy. As my folks and I moved along the trail I noticed water droplets on the leaves of a rhododendron. We stopped for a rest next to the woody plant along the bank of Abrams Creek. I sat down, letting my hands feel the damp Earth, laden with bryophytes. I studied the beads of water on the plant before turning my considerations to the creek. My love for nature began young. In the wild I am always in awe of water. Water, in its many forms, occupies every part of the forest. Clouds are among my favorite forms water takes. There is nothing like standing on a green mountain bald on a cool spring day — the clouds steal the show. Whether weeping grey or puffy white, when the land is again bursting with life, clouds hug ridges and occupy valleys in ways that can only be described as breathtaking. I once had the holy experience of camping in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina on a late Spring evening at over 5,000 feet. As I hiked to camp I moved across mountain meadows covered in a thick fog, but my destination sat above the clouds. That night around a roaring bonfire, in the company of budding plants and a vast array of newly awakened wildlife, there was a piercing, radiant starry night above, and a sea of clouds cracking with lightning below. All of the heavens witnessed Earth’s wonder. From the clouds, in the chill of January, snow seems to continually fall over temperate Appalachian forests. In the winter, snow dusts the landscape, coating evergreens and the naked limbs of deciduous trees. When running old trails in this ancient terrain in the depths of the season, ones own breath is often visible as it escapes the lungs. If, like I often do, one follows this vapor in the white landscape, it is hard not to notice the depth of the mountains this time of year. Though peppered in white, something about the winter makes the Appalachians appear dark. Perhaps it is exposed ancient metamorphic rock, thick ice that clings to steep mountain ridges and the bare grey bark of trees, but the color avoids a description. The mountains are mysterious and beautiful beyond words. My favorite time in the woods, however, is Autumn. Fall air is always brisk, the sky is often a beaming cerulean blue, and it is of no mystery why the southern Appalachians are long described as “smoky.” A thick mist settles in the mountains in the fall and the forest changes dramatically daily. Some of my favorite moments of solitude, and thus my life, are experienced in the mountain lowlands in late autumn. Under the splendor of November hue, on the banks of a stream I am often lost in thought as I watch water carve its way through ancient rock while, at the same .

1. What I Have Learned from Nature
by Grant Mincy
Some of my fondest childhood memories are with my parents
hiking around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One
memory is particularly vivid. I was six and on the trail to
Abrams Falls after a summer rain moved through the forest. The
sun was just again peaking through the canopy. As my folks and
I moved along the trail I noticed water droplets on the leaves of
a rhododendron. We stopped for a rest next to the woody plant
along the bank of Abrams Creek. I sat down, letting my hands
feel the damp Earth, laden with bryophytes. I studied the beads
of water on the plant before turning my considerations to the
creek. My love for nature began young.
In the wild I am always in awe of water. Water, in its many
forms, occupies every part of the forest. Clouds are among my
favorite forms water takes. There is nothing like standing on a
green mountain bald on a cool spring day — the clouds steal the
show. Whether weeping grey or puffy white, when the land is
again bursting with life, clouds hug ridges and occupy valleys
in ways that can only be described as breathtaking. I once had
the holy experience of camping in the Blue Ridge of North
Carolina on a late Spring evening at over 5,000 feet. As I hiked
to camp I moved across mountain meadows covered in a thick
fog, but my destination sat above the clouds. That night around
a roaring bonfire, in the company of budding plants and a vast
array of newly awakened wildlife, there was a piercing, radiant
starry night above, and a sea of clouds cracking with lightning
below. All of the heavens witnessed Earth’s wonder.
From the clouds, in the chill of January, snow seems to

2. continually fall over temperate Appalachian forests. In the
winter, snow dusts the landscape, coating evergreens and the
naked limbs of deciduous trees. When running old trails in this
ancient terrain in the depths of the season, ones own breath is
often visible as it escapes the lungs. If, like I often do, one
follows this vapor in the white landscape, it is hard not to
notice the depth of the mountains this time of year. Though
peppered in white, something about the winter makes the
Appalachians appear dark. Perhaps it is exposed ancient
metamorphic rock, thick ice that clings to steep mountain ridges
and the bare grey bark of trees, but the color avoids a
description. The mountains are mysterious and beautiful beyond
words.
My favorite time in the woods, however, is Autumn. Fall air is
always brisk, the sky is often a beaming cerulean blue, and it is
of no mystery why the southern Appalachians are long
described as “smoky.” A thick mist settles in the mountains in
the fall and the forest changes dramatically daily. Some of my
favorite moments of solitude, and thus my life, are experienced
in the mountain lowlands in late autumn. Under the splendor of
November hue, on the banks of a stream I am often lost in
thought as I watch water carve its way through ancient rock
while, at the same time, laying the sediments that will tell
future travelers of our place in history. I swear one can feel the
terrain, littered with a mosaic of detritus, soaked in a thick mist,
and carved by the river continuum breathe this time of year.
Natural places are of incredible importance. John Muir once
wrote: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play
in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body
and soul.” This is a statement of deep ecological truth.
Nature is wild. In the wilderness one is wild. On an early
September afternoon a few years ago I escaped for a lone stroll
in the woods. I worked my way up and around Curry Mountain,
had lunch on a rock in the shade of a great Eastern Hemlock and
was making my way back home when I came across two black
bear along the switchbacks. They saw me before I saw them.

3. There was a quick dash, a scattering of leaves and I saw the
black fur of a cub run down slope – it was then I noticed the
mama bear. Standing in front of me some 20 yards away was a
rather large beast who was occupying the trail. We stood in
silence, staring at one another for sometime until she let out a
slow growl. I raised my hands to the air and loudly proclaimed,
“I mean you no harm, bear!” She turned and quickly
disappeared into the brush.
Knowing they were still near I kept talking loudly to them as I
slowly made my way through the switchbacks. As time passed I
picked up my pace. Before I knew it I was whooping, laughing
madly and running through the woods. I was jumping over
trickling springs, tree roots and piles of rock. I was full of joy,
my heart pounding furiously. I was myself, simply a human in
purest form, all labels stripped away, no worldly burdens — just
an animal, wild and alive!
This unbound freedom is possible only in the wild. There await
holy experiences everywhere in nature. Whether it is moments
of silent, still reflection, or adventurous swimming in the roar
of a river, swallowing its current, pelted by rain, breathing hard
and laughing under the chill of a night sky with brothers,
natural spaces provide us with a liberty that cannot be
experienced in urban corridors. Untouched landscapes are the
cathedrals of nature.
We cannot truly know freedom, nor understand absolute liberty,
without wilderness. The wild will exist long after human
civilization. We have only a precious moment on this Earth, the
blink of an eye regarding the eons in which we measure
geology, to understand boundless freedom. In the wilderness
there exist only the fixed laws of nature. There are no economic
systems, no political powers, no established authority, but
rather an anarchic freedom we are blessed to experience. In
open spaces we are free to live, even if just briefly, absent of
control or administration from the Leviathans of civilization.
This freedom alone is enough to protect wilderness landscapes,
for ourselves and fellow species — nature for nature’s sake.

4. Wilderness can exist without us, but we are doomed without it.
May we preserve wild lands – coasts, deserts, forests and
mountains – so we may preserve what makes life worth living:
Liberty.
Imagine the forest. Suddenly, with a crack of lightning and
thunderous boom, from dark, weeping clouds, falls a torrent of
water. Plummeting from the vivid horizon towards the lush,
ominous hue of green Earth, the cascade crashes into a mixed
canopy of poplar, oak, hemlock and spruce.
A rich, harmonious chorus fills the brilliant forest. A howling
melody of pattered rain pails the rhododendron, splats the
trillium, showers the fern, soaks the detritus and beads the moss
before saturating the damp, woodland floor. Beneath the soil,
among mycorrhizae, annelids and abundant microbes there is a
pull downslope, a burst from a spring and the rush of a high
country stream. Along twists and turns, crags and ridge, falls
and flow there is a longing for, and final jubilation with, the
communion of rivers roar. Among carved rock and knotted limb,
the journey across the watershed begins long toward the basin.
What a great, dangerous adventure!
Nothing but a dizzying wonder awaits beyond every fall, rapid
and maelstrom eddy. As clouds recede the Earth breaths a
mountain mist, illuminated by the sun, that instills natures heart
breaking splendor. Oh, be free young, wild torrent! In wildness
may you travel deeper still! Rush along your crooked channel
walls, carve the valley, shape the open plain, welcome the delta,
bask in the sea, rise to the heavens and fall once more!
Imagine yourself in this forest. A human animal. An individual.
Sitting, legs crossed on a moss laden log. The water showers
your spirit. Soul happy! You stare into the canopy. There’s an
unbreakable smile on your face. You laugh, roar and howl!