My wilderness experience

I just got back from a fabulous three-day weekend at Nordhouse Dunes near Manistee, Michigan. It was the best weekend I have had in a long time! The trip was for my Wilderness Writing & Experiences course through the School of Journalism. The class consists of one camping trip. That's it. We turn in a journal at the end of the trip and write a nature essay at the end of it. It is quite literally the best class I have ever taken.

We left on Friday morning, had a quick stop in Muskegon for a lesson on sand dune ecology, and arrived at our camp site around 4pm. There were are 13 students, the professor and a graduate student. The trip was completely unstructured. We were told to do whatever we felt like doing in the park. I hiked with a group to find Nordhouse Lake, a mile or two south of our campsite. Frankly, I am surprised we found it at all because the trails weren't marked all that well!

Lake Michigan. Sigh.....

All in all, the weekend was a perfect respite from the pressure of life here at school and made me think more about my place in the world. The park was an officially designated wilderness area, but it wasn't without touches of humanity. Not only were there the obvious signs, such as the camp sites, but also I saw wrappers on the ground and cans along the side of the road. I saw some of these things even when I felt complete isolated from the world in the middle of the forest. I felt as if I could take 20 steps off the trail and be completely lost from society. But then I would look down and see a gum wrapper and the fantasy would be ruined. But it also reminded me that through human actions and just by chance we are intrinsically linked with nature and the wild and cannot be separated from it, for better or for worse. What that means for how we should be living, though, is something I will have to think about further.