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Health & Fitness

Compassion Speaks: Time Out of Time

by Susan Becker, RDC

I came to camping late in life.  I find that I enjoy going off alone with an ice chest filled with the basics, a box of assorted plates and utensils, a sleeping bag, and a tent.  The only weather I draw the line at is below 45° or drenching rain.  And what I’ve found is that camping (or spending the day up on some mountain or in a forest or a salt marsh) is just the container for experience that I’ve come to cherish.

The back story: until a few years ago my “back to nature” experiences were minimal and pretty dismal.   Two prominent first-half-of-life experiences left indelible and miserable memories.  The first, visiting my brothers at Boy Scout camp on summer Sundays, involved an endless car ride, sunburn, mud, mosquitoes and a patina of grime on them both.  The second was my own two-week Little Flower Catholic Girls' Camp adventure.  Twelve of us to a cabin, terrible, terrible homesickness, and the bathroom down the path.  They called it Flushing Meadows; I was not amused.

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I outgrew the homesickness, but the visceral memories of the rest have eroded only gradually and through some surprising turns.

For years I've taken take a week or so a year to retreat from the things (and people!) that sap my physical and emotional energy.  I go off to places that provide quiet and care, and spend the time reading, reflecting, praying, and first catching up on, then banking, sorely needed sleep.  Phones don’t ring in these places; people don't stand around making small talk; and if you really need to check your e-mail, you have to “ask at the desk," risking the displeasure of those whose job it is to maintain the “contemplative” in this contemplative space. 

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Fifteen years ago I stepped beyond my then-comfort zone and into a little gem of a place in the Arizona desert with what for me have become the right doses of structure, attentiveness, comfort, and simplicity.  I continue to show up there for all that it has to offer, and each year I discover more.   A few of the learnings have been about my addiction to the internet and the struggle of withdrawal; about the power of sustained silence; about what living simply can mean;  and about being open to the invitation to go even deeper into silence and solitude and simplicity.

 An internet search turned up the Cascabel Community Association, an organization dedicated to creating that precise space deep in the Sonoran desert wilderness.  The Buddhist expression about the teacher appearing when the student is ready seems to work for me.  I signed up.

The richness of the week's solitary experience was in its simple lessons; in the heat and light supplied by the sun, in the 55 gallon drum of water replenished as needed; in having to walk down a path to the "bathroom," an unenclosed compost toilet; in the ravens and mice and prairie dogs among whom I lived (and who were there first.)  

And the gifts kept on giving.  I was invited to intentional and focused conservation of resources, when the water and propane supply needed to last a week.  I was taught that two clay pots and some wet sand keep food at an even 55°F.  I learned creative improvisation for activities such as bathing, basic hair care (very basic!) and laundry.  The alignment with the rising and setting sun would have managed time for me if I'd been able to let it.  The profound silence that is such a part of the desert allows intimacy with the natural world and a oneness with the divine and all of creation.  For one whose idea of simple living was basic cable, this was a real stretch – and I loved it.

At the same time "extreme" desert living is not something I'd do too often; distance and the expense of getting there are limiting realities.  And so, last spring, three years after that first experience, I realized I could tap into parts of it without going 2500 miles for it.  With a few dollars and visits to Dick's Sporting Goods, Eastern Mountain Sports, and the Container Store, I was able to assemble a passable collection of elementary camping materials.  Before all this my boast was that the closest I'd ever come to outdoor living was sleeping with the window open. 

Though it's just not quite the same as the wilds of Arizona, I can go off for a couple of days and live "as if.”   "Desert lite" invites me through the door to intentionality, to silence, even though most of the places I go are heavily visited state campgrounds, to time out of time with its own rhythm and tempo, to a reality that is part of me but that in my daily life is way more remote that I'd like. 

I went back to the hermitage again this spring.  The 13-year drought in the Southwest has driven away the ravens and jack rabbits; apparently mice are hardier.  I'm four years older than the first time, and the physical challenges and spiritual work seemed harder.  I left believing that I would probably not be coming back again . . . until I began to think about another week there some day.

All of this to say . . . you just never know which moment in your life will invite you through a door and into the unexpected.  I’m sure that if had been more attentive to what was going on in that place inside me where yearnings live, I might have moved to it earlier and be better at it now; my days or weeks in solitude camping in forests or sojourning in deserts would look way less profound . . . but then, maybe not . . . maybe I need them to be just exactly the way they are.


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