We just returned from a trip to the boundary waters canoe area (BWCA) in northern Minnesota. Five days, four nights. Paddling canoes, portaging, or carrying our canoes and gear from lake to lake, seeking out the best campsites, swimming, eating, sleeping. Resetting ourselves back to a simple life. A life where all that matters is moving our bodies, obtaining water, setting up and taking down shelter, and cooking food. The basics. No cell service, no distractions. When we simplify our life to that degree all of the nonsense sloughs off, all the desires, all the “I needs” that are really “I wants,” all the things in our life: the TV’s, the computers, the cars, the houses, that cute dress, those perfect shoes. It all just falls away so suddenly we don’t even realize it happened.
When we emerge from the woods, jump back in our car and find ourselves home again with all of our stuff, there’s this distance we feel from it all, this sense of excess when we see all the things we’ve accumulated around us and we wonder why it all seemed so important before. It’s like hitting a reset button. It gives us a chance to reevaluate. Do we really need all this? Is this what works for us? Do we really need that car, that house? Do I really need to turn on the TV or the computer? I hesitate to pick up my phone and check in with the world because I know how fast that restart can be undone. But eventually I do, I have to, and eventually our simplified ways, our desire for less falls further and further into the background of our daily lives. Once again, we find ourselves back where we began. And that’s when we know it’s time for another restart. This is exactly how we feel every time we return from Easter Island and lately our challenge has been to find ways to keep that feeling alive in our household for as long as possible. But, still, the best way to return to the basics and regain perspective is to just get away from it all whenever we can.
And when we do, we have nothing better to do than to watch the world in all its glory and relish every sunset and every sunrise, every transition from dawn to day to dusk to starlight, the sound of silence, the softness of the wind against our skin, the calls of the wildlife, the creaks of the trees, the sounds of all the beings all around us. And for those moments I can really feel, with every cell in my body, just how wondrous this life is.
