Chapter 2 of "How to Be in Nature": old naked pastor ass and how to fall in love with the world

How to Fall in Love with the World:

When you are twelve or thirteen, get invited by your cousin Eric, who might be called your best friend in the world, to go on a church trip with him to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Have absolutely no clue what the fuck that means but have absolutely no resistance and no questions. Just say yes and then notice as you track a vague sense of something being tectonically important about this notion.

Continue living in your frozen state between learning about going and then actually being in a van driven east and north by a couple that you don’t know, surrounded by a bunch of kids you don’t know, but then see Eric’s big ears next to you and let the anxiety recede just enough that you don’t puke. 

Look around and worry that you might puke, and if you did what would you puke into? Don’t notice how commonplace this feeling is, because your nickname at school was “ralph” and not named after the mouse. Thankfully, stay unaware of the all pervasive, gripping fear and tension you have in your body at all times, and keep doing a great job of skating on top of it like the kids in the other towns that have a pond or a skating rink, even though its cold as fuck all winter long. 

Don’t puke because you have mostly outgrown doing it most every day, at least 5 times a week. Read a book. 

Stay over for a night on the floor of a church in the middle of Minnesota because it’s a long way to the boundary waters from central North Dakota. Keep your distance from the trouble-making older kids in the group, there’s two of them. Watch them look at you and not know what to do. Just not know what to do yourself. It’s ok. 

Set your sleeping bag up by Eric and brush your teeth in the church bathroom that smells very old. When the others start running around and being wild, just follow along awkwardly and sit on your sense of not wanting to get in trouble. 

When your cousin runs into the water faucet that sticks out of the wall and breaks it off, feel a wave of fear and shame and terror that is certainly not yours to feel. Hang in the balance of total annihilation while the adults share their legitimate anger at such a dumbass and disrespectful thing to happen. Wonder how on earth money will be made to replace this and block it out so you don’t puke.

The next morning, thankfully get the fuck out of that church and drive the rest of the way to the Boundary Waters. When you stop for bathroom and food breaks, start to notice that in the other van there is a girl unlike any girl you have ever seen in your entire life. Ask Eric who she is and when you hear “May” said out loud, feel an early version of one of the greatest joys of your entire life, the full-bodied, full-hearted loving of a woman, in this case a girl. 

In the back of your mind, notice that she doesn’t look like anyone you’ve ever met, except for Cassandra on Wayne’s World—who you obviously haven’t met but have spent most of your nights thinking about as you twirled your dick in your hands.

When you hear that she was adopted and was born in Vietnam, don’t even notice that you have literally no clue what that means. All you know is that when you look at her the sensation is so far past what is possible to feel that the energy just bounces quickly to the envelope of your body and back a few times, then you just squish it to the side and look away.

Get paired up with Eric in your canoe and before you shove off into your boat, listen as the old pastor who was driving the other van and adopted May shows you the maps and tells you about how many nights you’re staying and all of that. 

For the first time in your entire life, breathe in the sharp pine and birch air of boreal wilderness and know in your bones that you are about to feel more alive than you ever have, by a factor so exponentially more than you’ve ever experienced. 

When the canoe floats, first realize you are terrified because you can’t swim and you haven’t ever paddled a canoe before. Grandpa took you on one or two canoe rides down the Ottertail River but he just had you sit in the middle with your hands on your lap.

Spend the entire first day of paddling going very, very slow, and in very not straight lines. When you finally do get to camp, feel heartbroken that the girls camp was on an island that looked so far away when you could see the flickering of their campfire in the dusk. 

See your first naked old man of your whole life as the pastor walks but ass naked through camp. Learn the word skinny dip and amongst all of the ways your little world is being blown open, be subconsciously thankful that seeing his penis swing in the air is the closest you have to get to it. Nobody else gets naked. Remember this as a funny thing later. 

Start building the capacity to tune your consciousness into life itself. As you sit around the campfire with the boys and men, pretend to sing about Jesus but instead look so intently into the fire that somehow it gets inside you without burning your body. Feel the cold air on your back and the heat of the fire on your front and embrace both all the way, noticing where they meet in your insides. 

Open your body to the noises of the wind and frogs and cicadas and birds and water as you lay in your tent. Feel the glory combo of exhaustion and excitement and lay awake with Eric not paying attention to what you’re saying. Mark this in your body as the greatest and most important day you’ve ever been on the earth, as long as you can tell and remember anyway. 

Get better at steering the canoe and making more efficient strokes. Notice the canoe of the two older boys is always very far in the back, and notice the face of the funny looking one, how it’s always scrunched up and the noises coming from his mouth are almost always very unpleasant. Ignore it for the most part and instead notice how the water here is like root beer, and how it feels very soft as you dip your fingers in while moving forward. 

Feel your hips go stiff from sitting at the same time you see an eagle land on a branch up ahead near the portage trail. Feel the mosquitoes land on you at the landing and the weight of your pack on the very first time in your whole life that you carry a heavy backpack overland. Know that this is very, very good training for you.

Each day, notice something happening little at a time, but then stand out on a rock a few yards away from camp where everyone was eating dinner. See May standing and looking at the water and go stand by her. 

Have two conversations with her. One is short, it goes like this:

“These rocks are big huh?”

“Huh? Yeah I guess.”

The other goes like this:

“May, this may be a surprise, or you may be aware, but from the first moment I saw you I have felt more alive and closer to God than I thought possible. I want you to know how perfect and beautiful you are. My body throbs with energy. My heart feels pain but it feels like the pain wants to just move my arms and body close to yours. I have never felt this shit before and its fucking wild. I don’t know enough yet to know that I want to kiss you, and I don’t know what sex is yet either but if I did I would want to do both of those things with you. I don’t know how to talk to you, and I don’t  really know how to talk to anyone, but I want you to know that on this trip my entire life is being flipped inside out and I’ll never be the same again. What I feel right now is actually happy, but it's more than happy, it's ecstatic. I think I would like to stay feeling this way. Don’t you think that these rocks and the water and the trees are so much fucking better than North Dakota? It feels like things are alive here! I feel alive here. What I want is to sit down and talk with you and maybe for the first time actually know another person. I hope I’m not being too intense or scary but would you like to learn how to talk to other people with me? Can you show me? Do you know how?”