On the Problem of Returning to Nature > IDEAS & IDEALS

• 목록

Around this time last year I went mountaineering, lost my way, wandered through the thickets, rocks, and uncertain pathways for many hours, and was forced, at last, to spend a night in the open air, unprepared, all by myself in hunger, exhaustion and fear. My ignorance, carelessness and arrogance caused the trouble. Although it was just a night, it was an eternity for me. I almost tasted the bitter taste of death. I panic even now remembering.

     The mountain I went to climb was not Mt. Everest in the Himalayas, nor was it Mt. McKinley in central Alaska. It was in the outskirt of Seoul, and I had already made several ascent of it before, and most of the tracks in it seemed quite familiar to me. It had never occurred to me that I could ever possibly lose my way. I had never thought that nature could be so treacherous, deceptive and terrifying.

      Before this accident, I had often thought of going into the wood and of spending  a night in it all alone by myself for a new experience, adventure and exploration. I often felt greatly intrigued by the sudden and unexpected  metamorphosis of the trees on the mountain hill not far from my apartment with the approach of night, and became very curious of the things that might take place in it in the world of darkness. It must be a great privilege, I thought, to peep into the forbidden world reigned by the dark prince and his followers, or by the devils or the witches. The trees shrouded in darkness, like the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden for Eve, had always been a mystery, seduction and enchantment for me.

     But in the wood at dead of night I realized immediately that I was quite wrong in the romantic curiosity about the world of trees after the sunlight or any light had completely gone out. It was simply a world of another reality I had never imagined before. It was a world of dread, fear, and confusion. It was anything but a shelter, a place of peace and comfort, as it was during the day. Although darkness and stillness dominated the place, it was full of sounds, movements and activities - all unknown to me. It was not dead. It was definitely a living entity full of spirits and sprites.

     I felt as if I had made a great mistake. I thought that I had inadvertently intruded into a realm inhabited by some monsters, goblins, elves, and fairies, who got greatly disturbed by my presence or even very angry for being spied upon. Definitely I was trespassing upon their holy and sacred territory. It seemed that they were plotting a conspiracy of silence against me seeking some terrible vengeance on me. It was not any kind of physical danger that evoked such strong fear in me. Like the poor little girl lost in the wood in the old stories and fairy tales, I, a fifty-five year old man, almost wept. I could go mad or crazy if I had been kept in it longer.

     Now I am, as you see, out of the dark wood, safe and alive, and I am very happy to be in the world of light. The stark nature I experienced during that night was a nightmare, simply a hell, and I feel very much relieved and grateful for being removed far from it now. I would not venture into it again even for the world.

     Once we lived, nay, had to live in the wood, or much closer to it, intimate with the spirits it embodied and creatures it sheltered. The woodland was not merely a place to which the early men resorted in a moment of leisure as we do nowadays. Most of them lived, as some few tribesmen in the African jungles or in the rain-forests of the South America still do, in the wood. It is quite natural that the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, began their first life, not by the water, not on the desert, not in the air, but in the Garden of Eden, that is to say in the wood.

     But, the wood is the place for man to leave behind, not to live in for long. We should thank our first parents much for their disobedience and for being expelled from the Paradise, that is, from the wood. The first lingering step they took out of the wood into the field was a giant step indeed for mankind to come. It was a step from darkness to light, from confusion and anarchy to law and order, from savagery to civilization, and from madness to sanity.

     History of human civilization can be defined briefly in many and various ways, and among them removing the forest, taming the wood, or felling trees is also a very important one. As a clearing in the forest lets in light, so the removal of the ancient woodland diminished not only the potentially dangerous elements in it for man, but also expelled confusion in our mental and intellectual life, and clarified our  view of existence. We have come a long way indeed to find solace, beauty and peace in the wood, instead of dread, fear and danger.

     Fortunately or unfortunately, we are now only  left with a few patches of woodland to remind us of the wilderness from which we were delivered. And yet, like a mother over her children, nature, whether it is primeval forests or mountains, primordial sky or ocean, or pristine streams, has strange power over man. We feel constantly hear it call and beckon us to return to it, and find rest, solace, peace, and happiness, and more distinctly when we feel get lost in the tangled wood of life, as  children hear their mother's call when they are away from home and feel weary and lonely. But, home, once we left it, is not what it was as we remember it, and we cannot live our childhood twice. We owe what we are to the very distance we have made, over thousands of years, between nature and man.

     The story of Ted Kaczynsky, so-called the Unabomber, arrested recently in the United States on a charge of murdering 3 and wounding 23 innocent people is horrible enough to stun us, but I feel pity for the man who went too deep and too far back to nature. A Harvard graduate, Assistant professor of mathematics at University of California, Berkeley, at the age of 25, Ted Kaczynsky, giving up his prestigious and promising career for unclear reasons in less than 2 years, went to a wilderness in Montana, built a small cabin there, and led a solitary romantic life for 25 years, avoiding people, growing vegetables himself, hunting rabbits for meals, and dreaming a grand dream of saving mankind from destruction by getting rid of some individuals whom he thought dangerous and unnecessary.  

     It seems quite clear that he was very sick in mind already when he decided to leave human society once and for all and go back to the wood to live in it by himself, but it is also quite understandable that a troubled man, like Ted Kacynsky, turned to nature for help and cure. But as we have witnessed, the nature did not provide the man with the saving grace that was needed badly for him, but only aggravated his nature. Two-years' solitary life in the wood of the Boston suburb was long enough for Mr. Henry David Thoreau to produce an American classic, Walden, but staying 25 years all by himself alone in it was just long enough to make a sick man a brute and a murderer.
          (September 7, 1996)