Reclaim the Wildness Within

Nothing quite like a road trip across the corn fields of Nebraska to get a man into a reflective mood about life, nature, and his relationship to the cosmos. Tonight, we ride!

While preparing for this epic journey, I began to think upon my recent trip home through the pastoral scenes of western Wyoming this past week. As I was in indulging in that luxury only afforded road trippers across uninhabited territories--listening to NPR--I heard a radio talking head talk about the concept of "wildness," that element of radicalism and spontaneity that makes life interesting rather than a drab machine of unending predictability. Henry David Thoreau tells us that "in wildness is the preservation of the world."

We might see ourselves as mere organization men/women, living predictable lives with quantifiable laws and easily digestible principles like the law of tithing, weekly Sacrament meeting, and monthly home teaching. When high adventure does present itself to us, some of us recoil, saying: "Heavens, I don't want to rock the boat; let's just stick to our quiet desk jobs."

But mortality was not meant to be a quiet desk job; we do enough of that already without seeking more! So as I travel across the plains, in a sense, seeking my own sense of wildness, please do yourself a favor and do the same. Do something different...anything at all. If you've got the money (as I wish I had), go skydiving. Rock climbing. Reclaim the wildness within.