As far as we can tell, there are two possible outcomes that follow from going out into nature. You either discover who you really are and/or you get got by a supernatural creature. Folks obviously get up to other things out there - taking pics for dating app profiles, filming ads for waterbottles, playing acoustic guitar, ruining otherwise fine relationships - but we’re pretty sure everyone ultimately ends up uncovering who they really are and/or being tormented by a blair witch. Neither of these outcomes has ever held much appeal to us.
We have, though, heard rumors that outcomes other than the main two are possible. Folks have told us that it’s nice to go out to the wilderness to “unwind” and “get away from it all.” While we’re skeptical that we can be unwound and that “it all” will let us “get away” - the promise of some kind of relief from urban life and day-to-day concerns is intriguing. If nothing else, it might be nice to spend an afternoon walking around without the anxiety of getting hit by a car that can’t wait three fucking seconds while we cross the street. It might also, come to think of it, be good to look at something other than luxury condos being built or roads being repaired.
So, we set aside our worries about death/self-discovery, opened our heart to the possibility that nature could heal our anxious mind, and set out for the great outdoors.
While there are (theoretically) two enormous nature preserves or wildlife parks or whatever you call a large collection of trees no one is (yet) allowed to build golf courses over on both the western and eastern tip of the island, we weren’t about to take three different buses to get all the way out to either of those places. We opted, instead, for the convenience of the big ol’ mountain that sits in the middle of the city.
As far as mountains go, it’s pretty tall. While Everest stands at 29,096 feet, our mountain clocks in at an impressive 761 feet. The nice thing about the slight size difference between Everest and our mountain is that Sherpa people can do things in Montreal other than make sure dentists in crisis don’t die ascending or descending a natural wonder. The not so nice thing about the slight size difference is that our mountain is less picturesque than Everest. Facing it from the east (ok, technically the north-east, but cardinal directions don’t work the same here as elsewhere (we’ll talk about that in another post)), it looks like this:
In the mountain’s defense, we’re a terrible photographer and it’s the ugliest time of year. It’s sometimes very pretty! Or it at least has some good angles. This just isn’t one of them. It kind of looks like a hill masquerading as a mountain from any angle, but nevermind. If this squat and desolate looking place was going to lead us to mental quietude, then it could be as squat and desolate as it damn well pleased.
The first thing that we learned about nature is that it - like bowling alleys - seems to have specific ideas about appropriate footwear. Our sneakers, for instance, were “not great” at helping us navigate the inclined ice. One might even say that our sneakers were “a hindrance” to enjoying nature at all.
That said, while we were busy worrying about braining ourselves we were not thinking at all about taxes or whatever. In its own way, this was nice. We had almost immediately replaced our old worries with fun new ones like “If we break open our skull, how long will it take for an EMT to get to us?” and “Is breaking open one’s skull for Substack content something one should be proud or ashamed of?” We couldn’t, though, concern ourselves with these fun new worries for too long because a full family (with like boots or something) was hot on our heels. We clambered (gracefully) up this little area and got even more all up in nature’s guts.
While we looked around at all the trees, rocks, trees, and rocks, we came to recognize that people probably appreciate nature more if they know something about it. Part of the pleasure of removing oneself from quotidian surroundings is replacing those surroundings with equally rich, albeit entirely different ones. The richness of one’s environment must, at least a bit, come down to how much or well one understands it. We imagine folks who like the forest probably, for example, know the names of trees and types of rock. “This is a borbob (?) tree,” they might say to themselves, “and beneath it are tannfo (?) rocks.” We can’t even make a decent joke about this because we don’t know any of the names of trees or rocks. In the absence of anything resembling knowledge, all we saw were variations of the same thing. Trees and rocks as far as the eye could see.
This isn’t, though, to say that the trees and rocks were uninteresting.
No, that’s a lie. They were uninteresting. Or, rather, we didn’t know how to get interested in them. Or any of this. This, though, is probably what some folks who live outside of cities feel about cities. A city, at a certain level of abstraction, is just a whole bunch of buildings shoved together. If you don’t know what those buildings are, what they do, or why they do it - then that assemblage of buildings is probably pretty dull. So, too, this assemblage of rocks and trees. The prime difference, as far as we can see, is that buildings enable you to do things and trees/rocks enable you to… ? Oh, maybe that’s the point. We would become mindful because the trees and rocks would antagonize us into it through their insistence on simply being trees and rocks.
It was difficult, though, not to feel like we were missing out on something. Like we either weren’t looking at nature correctly or weren’t opening our mind to its restorative powers appropriately. We were, in fact, getting slightly stressed out that we weren’t getting sufficiently unstressed out here. This was, maybe, because the mountain is (as we said) really, very much still kind of part of the city. The picture above makes it seem like we’re off in vvitch territory, but just to the left of that picture is this:
While the city was always more or less literally in sight as we climbed the mountain, we wondered whether this actually made much of a difference. The city, for us, isn’t really the source of any of our worries or anxieties. The noise, congestion, etc. isn’t something we ever feel troubled or bothered by. Even the higher-order anxieties that haunt us continually aren’t really born of the city. We worry about living a worthwhile life, improving the days of others, being understood and cared for. These would still, we’re pretty sure, be worries in nature. Does this, then, mean that there’s no escape? That wherever we go, our worries will follow? That the idea of some spiritual calm or sense of well-being arising from communing with the natural world is just a myth hawked by bad poets and politically-suspect lifestyle gurus?
For whatever reason, these questions didn’t really gain traction. They didn’t animate any consequent thoughts or arguments. So, we got back to walking and looking.
It took an hour or so to reach the top of the mountain. We spent a large amount of that time thinking nothing much at all. When we got to the lake at the top of the mountain, we took a picture.
We really don’t want to say that we reached a blissful state of calm as a result of walking on a path near trees for an hour, but we also really don’t want to lie to you. We weren’t blissful, to be clear, because that’s not physiologically possible for us. We were, though, surprisingly calm about the fact that we had climbed this whole ass mountain without having a single interesting thought to share with you. We tried to consider all the ways we could forcibly turn this leisurely stroll up a hill into “good content.” We lazily considered how we might inspire engagement or motivate shares - but the experience seemed to resist being instrumentalized in that way or maybe we just didn’t want to instrumentalize the experience in that way. Who knows. Nature was so boring that we’re boring now.
A little ways away from the lake is a designated place to survey the city from on high. Not thinking and not knowing what else to do, we went there and took a picture.
This would be the part where we summarize everything we’ve said with some larger takeaway about life or society or whatever, but we don’t have that to offer. We learned nothing here. We just walked and looked at trees and rocks. We saw the city from a different perspective, but it looked just like the city. It is many buildings all shoved together. We had worries, old and new, but also long stretches of not worries. We neither unwound nor got away from anything, but didn’t get more wound or deeply into anything. We just walked and looked. It was dumb and boring and really quite nice.
Oh, we almost forgot. As we were turning around to go down the mountain we experienced a deep, profound inner awakening and our heart vibrated along with the inmost harmony of all creation which lead us to understand clearly and fully that we are all merely the memory of a star bubbling headlong into the temporary rapids of heavenly love. We felt whole and one with everyone and everything. But then immediately after that this happened :(
Bored is not a bad thing, if more people could accept it some of the time the world may be a happier place. Nice blog, well done
"Nature was so boring that we’re boring now." Laughed out loud and also think becoming boring/being bored is leveling up. So, DING DING DING: Achievement Unlocked !!! 🔓