Nineteenth-century European philosophers and artists raved about how nature immersion transformed humans, especially those who really flung themselves into Her arms. Mountain ranges themselves earned a new adulation as mountain climbing and seeking nature’s extremes grew rapidly after the European middle class expanded following the Industrial Revolution. The mountain-worship continues today, of course, and Robert Macfarlane reports that in the summer of 1997 alone, 107 people were killed in the Alps trying to climb peaks such as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn (Mountains of the Mind). I’ve observed this nature frenzy firsthand in California, of course.
One big challenge in writing these columns has been to find new vocabulary and metaphors to describe the ineffable impact of long hikes and overnight backpacking treks, including “dry” climbs up easy local peaks such as Little Pine Mountain, McPherson Peak, McKinley Peak, West Big Pine Mountain and the sacred Mount Iwihinmu (aka Mount Pinos).
In 1856, John Ruskin wrote grandiloquently, “Mountains are the beginning and end of all natural scenery.” Romanticism began much earlier with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and we can see it represented in a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, including his 1818 canvas “The Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog” (lead photo). What Ruskin and fellow aesthetes called the mysterious “sublime” feeling, others simply emphasized with descriptions of how transformed they felt after days spent in the mountains, in remote seas, crossing the Great American Desert and venturing into distant jungles.
So many of my nature descriptions have ended by lamely concluding how “enchanting” the three-day trek was, or perhaps “how uplifting or tremendous the outdoor experience” had become. When we get into the sublime and the romantics’ extravagant embrace of out-of-body realities, and also read Edmund Burke’s “On the Sublime,” we understand that these experiences transport us beyond our normal selves into regions of awe and grandeur, and sometimes even into the absurd or the grotesque.
Charles Darwin, the great 19th-century biologist who first understood the impact of a huge time-scale on the Earth’s life-forms, not only confirmed the theory of evolution but also stood amazed at mountain scenery in Chile while sailing around the world on the HMS Beagle expedition.
Today, we can follow Macfarlane’s lead into a reverence for and better understanding of “deep time.” Deep time is simply our awakening experience to the vast periods of time spanning the Earth’s natural history. Unlike Bishop James Ussher’s 6,000-year span for the planet, most educated people today accept that it’s at least 4.5 billion years old. But we’re still just beginning to comprehend what that means in terms of landscape, sea levels and life-form extinctions (at least five so far).
For decades now, I have gone to the southern high Sierra mountains and various local dry mountains (listed above), and been astonished by deep time. Whether staring amazed at truly ancient seabeds showing marine fossils embedded at 3,000 feet near Forbush Flat Camp (mostly bivalves), or wondering at the stubborn persistence of conifer-crowned peaks, say, at the Sierra San Borja, the personal experience of deep time will definitely spin your head around and ennoble your understanding. Staring at the marine fossil shown, you sink into the deep time of the Eocene era, and petty human cares drift away.
Deep time for me equates to Burke’s feelings of the “sublime.” American landscape artists such as F.E. Church and Albert Bierstadt painted enormous canvases with generally tiny humans somewhere at the bottom (click here for a Bierstadt canvas).
My 48 years of hiking locally and in the Sierra convincingly prove to me that wilderness immersion into “deep time” experiences does much more than merely revivify the mind and intensify emotional feelings. Standing, like Vasco Núñez de Balboa at Darien in 1510, or gazing across the many gray horizons of the Hurricane Deck, will knock your everyday self for a loop. You may gasp, and have to sit down and simply stare for an unmeasured period of “time.” You may make an important life decision that had been gnawing at your unconscious mind, or you may determine that you want raisin bran rather than oatmeal for your next breakfast.
You can return from one of these deep time excursions, well-exercised to boot, and plunge back into your life duties with renewed vigor and new ideas. Deep time immersion techniques must be practiced regularly to deliver the most emphatic effect. My minimum weekly workout means two vigorous day hikes from Skofield Park up Rattlesnake Canyon to Tin Shack meadow (1.7 miles one way) and a third modest walk from my tiny Westside home up and into Elings Park from the “back” side at the top of West Valerio (75 minutes). This is minimal, and can be done after work or before work.
These three activities per week are grand in themselves, but I also do them to be in shape and prepare for longer half- and full-day hikes into the local backcountry, specifically the San Rafael Wilderness. Deep time happens on these for sure.
All of these forays, but especially those in the Los Padres National Forest, afford chances to experience that deep time feeling we earn with stimulating “forest bathing.” Multitudes of Americans desperately need some sort of restorative “down time” (and deep time). Over the years, maybe a few visions creep in; you won’t know until after they occur.
Deep time regeneration is obviously far more restorative and anxiety-reducing than those banal human habits and addictions rife in decadent human societies today: alcohol, tobacco, pills, video games, political messianism (left or right) and gadget love, to mention only a few. I dare the reader to try a similar walking routine aimed at gaining these deep time experiences. The activities are free and always outdoors. Do these three hikes per week for two months, and self-verify.
For the longer inland hikes, click here and see selections in one of my previous columns.
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» I’ve relied on Robert Macfarlane’s “Mountains of the Mind” (2003) and recommend his more recent “Underland: A Deep Time Journey” (2019), both available at Chaucer’s Bookstore. Edmund Burke, “A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” (1757).
— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in the Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read additional columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
