Feel the Wild

by Fox, Daniel; Fox, Daniel;

  Disruption

  I like learning stuff. The more information you can get about a person or a subject, the more you can pour into a potential project. I made a decision to do different things. I want to do things that have a better chance of being thought of as original. I do everything I can to disrupt my comfort zone. —Brian Grazer, film producer

  The wind has been blowing strongly and steadily at 40 km/h all morning. The mountains, which on a normal day can be seen piercing the sky, are cut in half by a dull blanket of featureless clouds. My tent, although anchored solidly, bends every time a gust comes rushing by. The magpies and crows fly low, while the gulls seem to truly enjoy this treacherous air. The Great Salt Lake, its water normally flat and still like a mirror, is covered with foot-high waves. And, as if purposely playing tricks for a seemingly obvious weather forecast, the rabbitbrush and sagebrush barely move, their coarse branches specially adapted for this harsh, windy and dry environment. Yesterday’s warmth and quietness have given way to a cold, noisy day.

  The little fortress of rocks I built around my stove doesn’t do much to arrest the wind, and I am left with little choice but to improvise if I want to have my morning tea and oatmeal. I pop open the trunk of the car, move the equipment and re-establish the kitchen in there, now protected by this workhorse of modern transportation.

  In some bizarre fashion, I love these moments when I am reminded that the beautiful and precious should never be taken for granted. It is when the simplest culinary conveniences aren’t available, or the hot, sunny day disappears behind a dark curtain, that you discover and appreciate the gifts the world delivers you. One word comes to mind: gratitude.

  Disruption is the foundation of happiness, and it is the way the world and Nature work. The key is to accept the unexpected and understand that the “ups” are appreciated only because they are relative to the “downs.” The beauty and the magic of life would disappear if they were constant, expected and guaranteed.

  Disruption reminds me of John Maeda’s book, The Laws of Simplicity, in which he contends that it is the complex moments in life we love, not the simple ones.

  Everything we cherish is rooted in disruption.

  Think about it. The spices in my food, the colour in my room, the decorations on a Christmas tree – they all disrupt an initial simple state and make it more exciting. The clouds in a monotonous sky make a sunset or sunrise truly amazing. A straight road might encourage a little speed, but the real pleasures of driving come with the curves and turns. Admittedly, these are small examples on the disruptive scale, but the way of dealing with them is no different than facing more challenging events. The secret is to realize that disruptions are not meant to be avoided but rather explored and appreciated. They expand our minds, deliver new experiences and make us appreciate the things and people we care for. Too much or too little disruption is only a question of perspective.

  When our ancestors migrated, they were nomadic not by choice but by necessity. Life was a constant adaptation to endless disruptions. The world around them changed, seasons came and went, and with that came the understanding that they were living in a dynamic world. As we became sedentary, no longer adapting ourselves to our environment but instead transforming it to meet our needs, our view of the world became more static. We started to separate ourselves from Nature. What had been a world we “lived in” became a world we needed to escape, conquer and control.

  Today, thanks to technology, we are more estranged from Nature and the realities of life than ever before. Disruptions have become the enemy, threatening our sanitized culture. Instead of embracing them and their power of discovery, we do everything to eliminate them. Instead of inspiring and teaching people to find the positive in situations that feel unwanted, we propagate the message that life is unfair and that there must be someone to blame.

  I have heard people say that cancer, unfortunate and destructive as it is, was the best thing that happened to them. How many times did we fear the end of a relationship only to admit its misery later and how much better life was after the breakup? How do you think we have evolved and survived? Adaptation and disruption go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other. We can’t dismiss the gravity of the changes that are upon us today as our impact on the world threatens our very existence, but we should not allow ourselves to assume this is the end. For me, the best is yet to come, and I refuse to think the contrary. If you take away hope for better days, why would anyone want to carry on through the difficult ones?

  Dinner at my tent was going be a wet and windy affair, so I decide to go into town and get a proper meal. On the way, I notice a coyote walking by the water. For two weeks it had been impossible to approach them – they were always on the move and would quickly disappear the minute they saw me. I get out of the car and walk down to the water’s edge, hoping the coyote will continue in his direction and pass by me. Perhaps it is because of the strong wind, but even though he notices my presence right away, he keeps trotting along on his course and finally comes within metres of where I am sitting. Pressing the shutter and thanking the animal, I smile, struck by the irony of the moment. It was the only time during my stay on Antelope Island that I was able to photograph a coyote the way I wanted. If it weren’t for the wind and rain, this encounter would have never happened.

  As the day comes to an end, I enter the tent to find my sleeping bag and the whole interior covered in dust. I laugh. How could I not? The day had been one big messed-up discovery. This dusty inconvenience isn’t going to change anything. I turn around and look outside. The bland daylight and grubby air are not really interesting to photograph, so instead I leave my sandy quarters behind and go to the Antelope Island State Park office to hang out with the park manager. After my arrival, he takes me on a drive around the island, beyond the gates and into wildlife sanctuaries that are undisturbed and closed to visitors. He tells me about the fascinating history, the early settlers, the geology and the beginning of the bison herd on the island.

  Had it been sunny, I would have spent the day by myself and with the animals. Instead, disrupted by the weather, I found comfort with my kind.

  Bison, Antelope Island, Utah

  ISO 400, 300mm, ƒ/5.6, 1/2000s

  Bison, Antelope Island, Utah

  ISO 500, 28mm, ƒ/4.5, 1/2000s

  Blacktail Deer, Kodiak Island, Alaska

  ISO 500, 83mm, ƒ/6.7, 1/1500s

  Look

  for the

  Unexpected

  Mendenhall Glacier Lake, Alaska

  ISO 100, 10mm, ƒ/9.5, 1/180s

  Pemberton Glacier Field, Canada

  ISO 200, 20mm, ƒ/11, 1/800s

  One Step at a Time

  Distances are covered one step at a time, one foot in front of the other until you reach your destination. Houses are built one brick at a time, books are written one letter after another. That is how things get accomplished – not by giant leaps but by committed small efforts. Something to remember when our culture of technology and instant gratification tries to sell us magic formulas for success and happiness.

  Change

  It is 10 p.m. I am lying down inside the tent, tucked in my sleeping bag. Outside, darkness has taken over. Camped at the foot of the glacier, there are no trees to be ruffled by the wind. There are only the mountains imposing their silent presence. Their sheer size encases me in a blanket of insignificance. Who am I really to be claiming dominance? My kind has only been around for a time that, when put in relationship to the scale of the universe, only gives us the smallest width of a hair. Just a couple of hours ago, I was sitting on top of a rock having dinner, taking in the humility of the moment. My eyes and my brain were trying to take in all they were seeing while sitting on an object that defied my understanding of permanence. In front of me was a glacier, a living giant entity of ice that has been carving this landscape for
thousands of years. How many years? God only knows. No one really can say the last time this soil was not covered by ice. The Last Glacial Maximum era reached its peak 26,500 years ago. The Karoo Ice Age goes back 260 million years. Those numbers don’t even make sense to me. In school I learned about the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Greeks and the Romans. The dominion of humans covers a period easily summarized into a sentence that goes like this: “The human era, which spanned 15,000 years, was a time of great accomplishments but unfortunately did not manage to survive.” The Neanderthal roamed the planet for close to 400,000 years. Who are we really? Despite our claims to greatness, aren’t we just a blink? A simple entity of flesh at the mercy of an energy that is bigger than us, evolving and expanding?

  My memory scans the hours that have passed and remembers when my sight focused on a rock half covered by ice. Bizarrely, I was suddenly filled with happiness. How can I not be? This rock had been buried and pressured upon for millennia and, now, for the first time, it saw the light of day and breathed the fresh air. From the second the ice melts, life sets in. The water flows, the flowers appear, the birds start to visit and the insects take ownership.

  Without the concept of climate change, my gut reaction about the glacier disappearing is one of relief. Maybe this is one of the major reasons why most of the world is having trouble processing what is happening. We all love milder winters and tropical temperatures. So why would we care about the ice going away? Wouldn’t it just bring to us what we have been paying to reach on all those vacations? I feel inadequate in making a judgment. Aren’t most of the things we cherish today a result of a previous ancestral destruction? Isn’t life just a series of comparisons without any real point of reference? What are we comparing our future to? Yesterday? Five hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, a million years ago? I’m tired of the current atomistic rhetoric.

  Change defines life; it is the ultimate constant. Listening to the glacier and the mountains talking, I don’t hear the pessimism that humans have swallowed. Over the hill, behind me, stands a black mountain, a Tuya. It is the core of an ancient volcano that erupted at a time when miles of ice covered the land. And look at the valley now; it is blooming with colours and the whistles of marmots calling my presence. It reminds me that life adapts and abounds.

  I was born more than four decades ago from parents who got together with the belief of a united future. That belief didn’t last long, but out of this forsaken union came two children and one of them is writing these words. Life is an endless loop of soaring and crashing. Is the human species really a bad one, or is it that we are experts at getting back up when we hit the wall? I have lost count of the amount of times I thought I had exhausted everything in my power only to find a new way out. It’s not that I choose to ignore the situation we live in and blindly think the world is in good shape – not at all – my stand is that it is pointless to blame the past and fill ourselves with guilt. Everything we do and did was because somewhere and somehow we thought it was for the best and worth the risk. Collectively, we have benefitted a lot from those decisions, but we must admit that those benefits have come at a great cost. We have pushed for a long time with little regard to consequences, and now we are being pushed back. Is it the end? Perhaps of an era, but it is also the beginning of a new one. We all have lived and remember a relationship that broke our heart and drove us to a place where we thought there was no love ahead of us, only to find ourselves months later wondering how we could have even endured for so long such an unfulfilled life.

  Life is dynamic and continually changing. This planet on which we live was formed out of chaos. Out of this inhospitable place living creatures have evolved. Life has flourished and perished several times. Was the disappearance of the dinosaurs good or bad? It depends. One thing for sure, we wouldn’t be here had they kept ruling the land. Our species literally rose because one died.

  As all these thoughts are going through my mind, my heart suddenly stops at the roaring sound of destruction. A boulder of ice has fallen near the glacier bridge. All this energy accumulated over thousands of years has been released with a massive bang! This audio tsunami is raging across the valley, and to my innocent ears it feels like the mountains are tumbling down. During the day, the glacier absorbs the heat and the affected frozen molecules of water become more malleable. The glacier’s edges stretch and bend, then at night, as the temperature cools down, those same molecules of water are now forced to expand within a structure that has been weakened. This ongoing expanding and contracting over time can break the mightiest of ice castles. The irony is that immediately after the thunderous fall, the silence returns and life continues. To the river the glacier feeds, and to the animals that depend on the river, this added mass of ice only brings more water that can be distributed. What will happen when the ice is gone? I guess the same as it has before. It will become something else, good for some, and bad for others.

  Change is by nature an unwanted force. Let’s face it, dealing with change demands a lot of energy, and the powers of stability and predictability are not to be underestimated. It is hard to build when the parts are constantly moving. Juggling is hard enough, but imagine doing it while riding a bicycle outside with the wind blowing and your eyes closed – borderline impossible. But change makes life evolve. It forces us to reassess our values and reaffirm how we want to move forward. It shows us what works and what doesn’t, and through that process we, and life, adapt. Individually and collectively, we learn, grow and hopefully become better humans. The tree of life is a not a direct and straight line. Evolution is a continual process of adaptations that has no moral code, a game of action-reaction that has no end.

  It might be hard to accept, but there is nothing sad about glaciers disappearing. Much like there is no sadness in a volcano erupting, or the neck of a baby antelope broken by the jaws of a cheetah so it can feed its pups. It is nature; it is life. What is sad is our cultural narcissism, arrogance and belief that life depends on our capacity to manage the planet. What is sad is our myopia and disconnect with Nature and with each other. What is sad is our lack of respect and value for life. It is true that the scale of impact humans have managed to create is off the charts. Our motivations to change shouldn’t be coming from a place of righteousness and guilt. They should come from a place of respect and humility, because we understand our dependency and symbiosis with the natural world.

  The next morning, I go inspect the glacier to find where that boulder fell. The sun has risen above the mountain peaks and it is shining down on the new exposed ancient ice; the shades of blues are truly mesmerizing! I wonder how Vincent van Gogh would have painted them. I sit down on a nearby rock and from my Thermos I pour hot water on my yerba maté. After letting the tea leaves soak for a few minutes, I bring the bombilla to my lips. By expanding my lungs, I create a vacuum and force the water up and into my mouth. I am aware and connected to every little step that makes this morning ritual priceless. As I swallow the warm liquid, a large smile appears on my face, making my eyes squint. In front of me, hovering a couple of metres off the ground and staring at me, is a hummingbird. Where did that little bird come from? That answer has no importance, really, because my heart and soul understand, hence my smile. Hummingbirds are messengers. In cities where life is more artificial, their appearances have less significance, but up here, in the mountains, hundreds of miles away from civilization, the timing of this tiny, feathered creature’s visit is no mistake. In ancient cultures all the around the world, hummingbirds teach us to look back at our past but not to dwell; instead they ask us to move forward. They remind us to focus on the positivity of life. How appropriate!

  Life is resilient. We are resilient. The reason why we will reach eight billion soon on the planet is not because we are bad but because we figure our way out. We rise when the shit hits the fan. This is what we do and what we are expert at. We experiment, we risk, we fall, we learn, we fall again, then grow and adapt.
Change is inevitable and necessary. It is life. It defines us and will continue to do so. However tragic the past, we must not lose belief in ourselves. Out of the darkest stories rise some the brightest and most inspiring people our kind has known.

  As I watch the hummingbird zoom away, I cannot help but feel hopeful. Not because I think this situation we are in and face is meaningless and easy to deal with, no, not at all. The reason I am hopeful is that, like a snake, we are about to shed an old mantle. The only way a snake can get rid of its crippling envelope is by seeking the thorny bushes and sharp, rocky edges. It will be hard, no question about it. We will have to question everything: ourselves and even the things we have come to take for granted. But, like the phoenix that rises from the ashes, life will prevail and the species that will come out of the troubled waters will be more mature, connected, humble and caring.

  Pemberton ice field, Whistler

  ISO 2000, 32mm, ƒ/11, 900s

  Self Portrait, Pemberton ice field

  ISO 200, 40.1mm, ƒ/8, 1/500s

  Sea Cave

  After five hours of smooth paddling, a couple of dolphin pod encounters and several mobula ray breaches, I round the north end of the island and start looking for my next campsite. San Marcos, an island in the Gulf of California, off the Baja Peninsula’s Santa Rosalia, has plenty of beaches where I can land. Inexplicably, as I am paddling toward a desirable-looking spot, my attention is pulled to the end of a giant rock formation where a tiny beach on the side of it is partially exposed. At first glance, there is no justification for me to explore this beach. It doesn’t even look big enough for a camping site, but a little voice inside my head keeps whispering that it might be something special. As a longtime solo traveller, I have learned the value of gut feelings, about the importance of listening to the intangible, about believing and accepting the signs when the world speaks to you. Without much mental resistance, I shift my weight and edge the kayak on its right side, stroke hard with my paddle and turn left. Little do I know what treasures lie just ahead.