We’re packing our bags tonight and heading to a scene not unlike this one. Unlike some vacations (as I once explained here), I’m eager to go. These days I realize how much I need the swaying pine trees and the smell of campfire smoke. I need to wear the same set of clothes over and over and pull a hat over my undone hair in satisfied defeat. I need to fall asleep to crickets and wake up to sunlight (or more likely the rattle of another campsite’s breakfast dishes). I want to be in the world, not insulated from it.

This summer, we’ve been watching the History Channel series “Alone.” On the show, ten men try to survive as long as they can in the wilderness. Each of them is alone (naturally), and must figure out ways to provide water, food, and shelter for themselves. I would never do something like that. The last time we went camping, I forgot the coffee creamer and treated it like a genuine hardship. If I encountered a mountain lion, I’d simply put my hands up in surrender. Nonetheless, I’ve found myself envying the lessons the men have been learning. The noise and distraction has been cleared away from their lives in a way that’s impossible for most people.

But you don’t have to go to extremes to learn the lessons that the natural world has to teach. You simply have to stop holding it at arm’s length.

Patience Taught by Nature
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Oh Dreary life!” we cry, “Oh dreary life!”
And still the generations of the birds
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife
With Heaven’s true purpose in us, as a knife
Against which we may struggle. Ocean girds
Unslackened the dry land: savannah-swards
Unweary sweep: hills watch, unworn; and rife
Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees,
To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass
In their old glory. O thou God of old!
Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these;
But so much patience, as a blade of grass
Grows by contented through the heat and cold.