wilderness wellness

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When we woke folk talk about "wellness" and "healing" these days, a range of punchy psychotechnologies often spring to mind. Therapy sessions, men/women circles, ayahuasca rituals, vipassana retreats... an increasingly capitalized realm of snazzy self-actualizing activities to soothe the ailing late-20's soul. As much as I've dabbled in most of these modalities, there's a hidden force that often gets discounted and eschewed to almost an unfair degree: the fresh forceful kick of Nature, in its full capital-N sense.

What I'm referring to stretches beyond the accessible comforts of strolling around your neighborhood park or hitting the occasional hike. To extract the healing juices of Nature, we're looking for an immersion that is fundamentally uncomfortable. Something that demands you put your literal skin in the game. A game that exposes your oppressive demons to the elements, a type of botanical exorcism. Creepy crawlies are the salvation!

I have a Substack piece titled "Eco-Therapy: The Healing Power of Our Backyards" that has been rotting away in Draft purgatory for years now. I've held on doodling about this topic for so long because I've lacked sufficient environmental variety. I guess that's what living in urban jungles and remote deserts does to you. South America has been my antidote: I keep relishing in the privilege to hop across luscious biomes with the swish of a step.

I like to operate in extremes, and if that means camping in the Amazon Rainforest for 4 nights, then I'm all in. I'm someone who prefers to alter their environment to coax out formative self-progress, vs. trying to force fit themselves into places like a misshapen Tetris block. Here's a dive into my descriptive diaries from the depth of Northern Brazil, an odyssey characterized by rare animal totems and isolation-induced introspection.

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We're deep in the jungle, with nothing except thick foliage and a ragtag gang of three European girls, one Canadian boy, and a Brazilian local. The more I expand my field of hearing, the more I realize that all animals whistle. I feel an elated rush of joy surging through my spine, as I imagine that despite the exotic differences in the lives of the species, there is one core commonality: they're just having a jolly good time! There are probably close to 3 million species of insect that thrive here. The dancing squirm of the lattern flies and rhinoceros beetles reminds me of a poem I recently discovered titled "worm sex":

i wasn’t aware that lying next to each other is a goal of its own. i envy the worms, who have less to prove and get to wiggle peacefully in the dirt all around us.

Suddenly, and then all at once, I feel bullets of liquid collide onto my body like speeding Manhattan subways during rush hour. The rain makes me realize just how small I am in this world. So insignificant, so inconsequential, so immaterial. When the forest's silence transforms into a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you're breathing in the thunderclouds and the darkness of the sky. Today I'm the weakest in the food chain, because at least the critters know what to do to insulate against the Amazon's torrential downpours. All I can do is keep moving, one swampy step at a time.



Surrender, as the masterful meditators say.

I suppose this feeling of powerlessness can be taken as an analog to real life. It's comforting to remind myself that "important things" don't matter as much as they seem. I don't have to be the smartest one in the room all the time. I don't need to become this supreme creative wizard to imbue my evolving identity with some sort of arbitrary value. I just need to be me!



Or following the spiritual Stoic principle of subtraction: I just need to be.

It's 5:48 pm, evening one. I'm on a canoe facing the wide expanse of a strait, trying to spot pink dolphins coming up for air at sunset. As hard as I concentrate, shades of pink only flash up for a split second. But the bobbing shadows just end up taunting me. It's fine, as I console myself, we're going caiman catching in a few hours! The thought of literally picking up swamp crocodiles by the nape and tail amuses me, but our survival guide Georgie guarantees that we'll at least get a glimpse of their hollow white eyes drifting in the pitchblack waters.

The chorus of croaks and chirps creep into my spine, and I stop thinking without trying. I close my eyes. I guess it doesn't really matter in the sheet of darkness, foreboding yet comforting in nature. My mind dims, and the newly-lit neurons glimmers with wonder. What nocturnal creatures will grace us this time? Five minutes in, a slender boa constrictor, half-molted, vibrates up the tree trunk like a surging electric current. Snap snap, tap tap. The subtle pulses of my camera lens punctuate the jungle's subtle symphony, with its power to immortalize these surreal moments.

Hard labour marks the second day, with the smoothest 6 am wakeup of my life. It's time to build, I jokingly tell myself, except this time its shelter instead of software. Our troupe marches through the rainforest like a pack of traveling circus performers — giddy to trek, to hunt, to craft. As I forage for rumberries and fungi in thick Amazonia bush, my mind keeps ping ponging to the past. I find myself flashing through a mosaic of memories in hyper-speed, like the elusive jaguar's jog. Is this some kind of nature-induced nostalgia? Past landscapes, past lovers, and past lives all cruise by like bullet trains, stopping briefly as a hazy homage to what I've given up to be here, right now. It's humbling to learn that charmed human life can also be found on the forest fringes. After a rocky boat ride that involved sailing through thickets of submerged peatlands and navigating through mangrove mazes, we stumbled across a local Indigenous family. Enter the Children of the Forest: two monkey-like boys perched in the middle of a whirlpool-locked rubber tree. Just ten feet over on shore, you could see their dismal living conditions — minimal cooking petrol, simple shacked housing, a smorgasbord of misshapen materials and donated appliances.

But wait... the children's wide-eared grins tell a different tale. As they jump face-first into the waters with delighted squeals, I'm momentarily teleported back to the crunchiest regions of Tanzania, Syria, Colombia — the most resource-poor but happiness-rich people I've met on the road. The thing is, the Children of the Forest ooze so much raw wisdom without even knowing it. One swift interaction and playful laugh exchanged with these kids is all it takes to resurface an important mantra for me:



There's so much meaning in the mundane, so much joy in the journey of just existing.

The next two days of wilderness life swell together with a muted intensity. My survival senses have sharpened: my reflexes help me snag a few Brazilian piranhas in the creek and line up booby traps for tonight's menu: fresh jungle rats. My mind slowly unravels like the ripples in clearwater after a pebble's throw. I'm dying to know: is the treetop toucan's cry goading me or guiding me? I wonder what kind of lasting effects this type of immersion will have on my growth.



Now I'm speaking to future me: maybe you'll have the answer here, but maybe you won't — I'd like to gently remind you that roaming in the tangly jungle was one of the most fulfilling experiences of your life.

One thing's for sure: I'll always remember you, and I'll be back again someday. Here's to honouring the wild wilderness in every sense of the word: a big hug to nature :)