Heaven knows there is plenty going on locally, statewide, and nationally to work up a good rant, but on this August day I’m choosing reflection over agitation. Here then, some food for thought.

Since first coming north in 1974, I have spent well over a thousand days in Alaska's wilderness, from the Southeast Panhandle to the North Slope, and among all the places I've been, the Central Brooks Range – which I explored that first summer – remains my favorite place of wildness. It’s a landscape I love deeply, one that is always with me, not only in memory but also in spirit. When I think about my relationship with the Brooks Range, I’m often reminded of a poem by Nancy Wood that’s become a personal favorite:

Never shall I leave the places that I love
Never shall they go from my heart
Even though my eyes are somewhere else.

A year ago at this time, I was deep in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve (which protects much of the Central Brooks Range), camped alone in one of the park’s many unnamed – and usually unpeopled – valleys.

* * *

Toward the end of my stay, I realize it’s no coincidence that I brought the writings of Loren Eiseley—a scientist who believed in miracles and embraced mystery—on this latest venture into the Brooks Range wilderness. No accident, either, that life’s circumstances forced Helene, my sweetheart, to bow out of the trip at the last minute, leaving me alone in the Arctic wilds for ten days. That’s not much when compared to Christ’s forty days or any number of contemporary solo journeys. But it’s enough time, certainly, to do some serious soul searching and shed enough of my urban skin to more openly embrace the wondrous wild.

Going solo into the wild raises the stakes; it magnifies and intensifies experiences, whether unnerving or sublime. There’s nothing like a wilderness sojourn, especially when alone, to renew or enlarge one’s sense of wonder and awareness of life’s miracles—and the greater miracle of creation. Or the universe, or all-that-is, or whatever you prefer to call it.

Is it not a miracle to watch Dall sheep lambs gambol across steep slopes that would paralyze a human mountaineer? Or to watch a yellow spider, no bigger than a sesame seed, crawl across the back of the hand before disappearing back into the tundra, where it somehow survives Arctic extremes? And isn’t it a marvelous thing to walk among huge, contorted, leaping walls of marble, formed over great expanses of time and then squished, fractured, and thrust upward into the sky—all by unimaginable earth forces—and finally sculpted by glacial ice? Or to stand in a valley sparkling wildly as ice crystals are lit up by the sun?

I know: not everyone can get deep into the wilderness. Or would want to. But of course that’s not necessary. While the wilderness may more easily open us to the miracles of this world, there’s plenty of wondrous stuff going on around us—and inside us—all the time.

As Eiseley and other wisdom keepers have reminded us across the years, life itself is a miracle—as are the parts of creation that our Western culture tends to consider “dead” or lifeless. And to be part of that spectacle is a miracle that needs to be regularly honored.

While it’s important that we be educated and warned about global warming, toxins everywhere, the dangers and potential cruelties of industrial farming (or industrial anything), we humans also need reminding that simply to be alive and part of this grand experiment – or whatever you wish to call it – is a mysterious and astonishing thing.

This matters because we behave differently in the presence of the miraculous. We act more respectfully and generously. We’re more open to being joyful, playful, and, perhaps most importantly, hopeful, essential ways of being in these anxious, destructive, scary times, when it’s so easy to be overcome by despair, hopelessness, and paralysis. I’m not suggesting a retreat from harsh realities. We need to keep working for the greater good, a healthier, more just, and peaceful world. But we need to stop now and then to praise and embrace life.

Firsthand experience of the miraculous is always best. But when that’s impossible, we need reminders. I get them from people like Loren Eiseley, Wendell Berry, Robert Bly, Matthew Fox, Terry Tempest Williams, Chet Raymo, Michael Meade, Scott Russell Sanders, Kathleen Dean Moore, James Hillman, Gary Snyder, Thich Nhat Hanh.

Above my desk is a quote attributed to the latter. In his own way, he says much the same thing that Eiseley does. I return to it often, especially when things seem darkest: “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

Amen and hallelujah.