This journal was originally meant simply to circumvent the need to send out the same e-mail to various friends; it was an easy place where people who knew me could get updates on my life, at their own leisure. Unexpectedly, though, it has brought in new connections in my life, for which I’m very grateful (particularly for one — you know who you are!). It has also allowed interested people a peek in on the goings-on in the Wilderness Guide program, and I’m glad that I’ve been a part of that sharing.

I should emphasize, though, that my experience is my own, and in some ways very different from what others are going through. I cannot speak for the school or for others, only for myself. There are many stories that I haven’t told, many that I don’t have the right to tell; each person here has a wealth of stories to share. We share much in our experience and beliefs, otherwise we wouldn’t be at Nishnajida together, but we also disagree on many things, and that diversity enriches us all.

I say all of this as a preface. Recently I wrote a letter to a few of my friends, describing the perspective that I’d gained from my experience. It occurred to me then that I have never explained here, in full, what I’ve been experiencing in terms of realizations about my lifeway. As it’s the end of the calendar year, it might be appropriate to do so now.

I began this program with the idea that I would be exploring myself spiritually, and the kind of life I want to live, and that I would be pushing my boundaries. I knew to expect the unexpected, and indeed the unexpected has happened.

I came from an upper middle class background, with no major hardships. I had a good amount of education — I played the violin and piano, I was in the Boy Scouts, I did well in high school and college. My lifestyle was that of most Americans: I played some video games, I ate fast food, I enjoyed watching TV and movies and surfing the Internet. All of which I now find to be rather empty.

Living in the woods required a lot of adjustment, and still does. It took a lot more energy to be outside all the time, in the elements, than it did to retreat to the safety of a dorm or house. I certainly ran to my car and went into town a number of times because I couldn’t handle the experience. There were more than physical discomforts, of course, as you can tell just by reading my past journal entries; I went through an array of emotional and psychological adjustments.

And social ones as well. Living with the same people all the time, with very different people, required some fine-tuning — we had to learn how to communicate and to be honest about our angers and frustrations. We had to learn how to not let things build up inside us.

I am by no means entirely comfortable in the wilderness now. But it is in my blood. Simply put, I now have a sense of what is “baseline,” in terms of health and inner harmony. The lifeway has taught me that.

The perspective that arises from my experience manifests in the little things as well as the big ones, and it has really taken a hold on me. I’ve gotten a sense of what is real and balanced and healthy. It is constant physical exertion — not necessarily very strenuous, but steady — to live outside. I am faced with physical sensations that can’t just be fixed by turning a dial. Getting water and going to the bathroom are activities in themselves. But in all of these things there is a real connection to the source and the destination of things, to the cycle of life. It begins from practical considerations — I drink water from the lake, therefore I care if someone illegally rides a motorboat on it — but extends to the spiritual, the concern for other living things. The practical and the spiritual become inseparable.

I’ve learned a lot about what constitutes wellness, physical and emotional. I went through my binges of sugar, but the constant diet of good foods — nuts, fruit, eggs, vegetables, wild game — has taught my body what true health is, and therefore, by contrast, how ill I was before, without even knowing it. Now my body has become more sensitive, it tells me what I need to know: As I become healthier, I can tolerate sick food less and less.

I have a sense, too, of what my emotional needs are, and I know when to take time off to be alone, when I need to “recharge” by walking in the quiet harmony of the trees instead of the voices of people. I know that when I become angry with someone, I can’t just bottle it up, because my body becomes tense and unhealthy, and only releases that energy when I release the anger and begin to communicate.

I’m realizing how deep this sense of health goes because of the contrast. Now that I’m here in the Los Angeles area, our modern society feels very unhealthy. The food is processed and refined and full of flavors and chemicals and pollutants, causing the body to work much harder to stay healthy. The lifestyle isn’t inherently physically challenging — while here, I’ve spent whole days without really doing anything with my body — and that, too, is noticeable. I’m used to doing things now — I looked in the mirror recently and noticed that I was more bulked up than I’ve ever been, just by the lifeway — so I’m getting physically restless living in the way that I used to be comfortable living.

Above that, there is a pervasive blindness to the consequences of this lifeway. Individuals are not to blame; the propagation of this system relies on an inability to perceive real health. I grew up in this system of disease, so I never questioned it; but stepping outside and coming back in, I’ve started noticing things that I never noticed before. Not just the food and the physical fitness, but the wastefulness and the utter selfishness that has now become an unavoidable part of this lifeway.

One has difficulty, in this civilized context, making choices to become conscious and respectful of other living beings, because the choice has largely been taken away. The pollutants in our foods and in the things we buy are not there by our individual choice, but they are the product of a destructive system and world view. No one is at fault, and everyone is at fault; we have become content in our implicit belief that humans are meant to rule the earth, and it has gone too far. Everywhere there is the semblance of control, but it’s only the semblance. In reality, there is no balance. We take wantonly from the earth to fulfill our needs.

I don’t have any answers, but lack of solutions is no reason to deny the problem. The first step is awareness.

My awareness has taught me that there is more to curing cancer than finding a way to kill cancer cells. Any holistic healer will tell you that the health of a system depends on the whole system. Right now, looking at our society, I see a body corrupted with many diseases that are intimately connected. The epidemics of humans are connected with mad cow disease and sudden oak death, and these are connected with using pesticides and toxic sludge on our crops and feeding hormones and ground-up livestock parts to livestock. They are connected to erosion and acid rain and global warming, which are connected to our choices to drive and use electricity, which are connected to the things we purchase and the demand for goods we create. Our wars of domination and control are also linked — did anyone actually think that the terrorist attacks were random acts committed by irrational or insane people?

This is alienation, that separation of a person from the world surrounding, that separation of a worker from the fruits of his labor and the replacement of it with some illusion like money. Alienation takes us out of the cycle of living, disconnects us from the primal matrix, the earth mother. It allows us to pretend that things are okay, because we don’t see the pesticides being sprayed on our food or the toxic chemicals being dumped into our drinking water. The alienation encourages blindness because that is the default condition; instead of being intimately connected, we are born into a world where we have to work hard to discover that connection, we have to ask where our water comes from or what goes into our food.

And it harms us in other ways, too. In a life lived in connection with the earth, there is something indefinable but essential to a healthy existence. The connection brings us a sense of something greater than ourselves, a greater circle in which we exist, a spirit that moves within us as well as without. In civilization, where we are disconnected, we find ways to intensify that experience that no longer pervades our lives. We build religions and create music and art to bring us that which we have lost, a sense of connection with self and universe. But they are safe harbors only, powerful responses — but responses nevertheless — to a developing world view that continues to wreak violence upon the foundation of life.

The name of that violence is modern civilization. By existing in it we defile the earth, the water, and the skies, driven by our own need to consume, which in turn is driven by the blind meaninglessness of the society in which we live, propagated by those who benefit — corporations, the media, the government, whoever holds power or money or both.

I know I sound like a radical. Undoubtedly some who read this would fear my becoming someone like the Unabomber. All I can say is that life and balance are sacred for me, and I will work for that vision. I seek only to change myself, to create balance and harmony in my own life. And the first step along this path is awareness, and this year thus far has been an opening of floodgates for my growing awareness.

Such has been my experience.