I was inspired by the idea of the wilderness years of Winston Churchill which was the time in between the two world wars where he was largely out of power and influence in Parliament. Even though this was a darker time for him, I believe that this period helped Churchill develop the strength he needed to continue on through the hardest periods of the Second World War without giving up hope.
As I continued to think about this I recognized that many leaders of the past have gone through similar periods in the wilderness. Ulysses S. Grant had a period after his initial time in army where he was discharged for drunkenness and yet he was able to come back from this and lead the Union Armies to victory. In a more literal sense Theodore Roosevelt was an up and coming star in US political circles when his wife and mother died in the same evening. Following this tragedy he left all of politics behind and went to ranch and hunt in the wilderness.
Though I do not have the background or aspirations of these leaders, I too feel that after working my way through school and the early part of my career that I am in a kind of wilderness where my true aspiration to be a writer has largely disappeared since my university days. In many ways my life is full of successes, but I still desire to make something of my more creative interests and I hope that the challenge of working through this period of uncertainty will help me get there.
Moreover, I have found that while I love many aspects of intellectual life, I have a pull to the physical wilderness as well. There is something about the raw and untamed natural environment that has connected me to a part of myself I didn’t know existed. In university I did not go out hiking or get out of the city much. I spent a lot of the time in the library or out with people talking about ideas. But upon leaving I found a love of camping, hiking, fishing, and then hunting. My wife has told me often that when she met me she never would have suspected that I would ever hunt anything.
As a result I found an important piece of me even though I didn’t start fishing until my twenties and I didn’t start hunting until 26. However, I believe it has taught me some important lessons about what it means to be a thinking human. I used to believe hunters were rednecks without any kind of intellectual strength. But as I have gotten into hunting and have begun talking to others, I see that hunting is full of people who do think deeply about it and feel the significance of taking a life and living off of that meat. There is something profound in the experience of struggling physically to provide food for oneself and ones family.
This blog will be a connection of those two worlds, intellectual and natural. Neither is better or worse, but I believe that many people would benefit from either the intellectual exercise of using ones mind or the physical exercise of contending with the natural environment. There is much to learn in both worlds and this blog will work to bring together the two in a meaningful way.
If there is one thing I have learned from years of attempting to improve myself, it is that a balanced life is the way that most people live well. Even though there are some people who dedicate themselves to become an expert in one thing, there are many more people who straddle the bounds of many different interests and passions. This blog will be for generalists rather than specialists. DIYers rather than Experts. I hope that though some of my experiences navigating the world as a generalist in a specialized world I can help others navigate this challenge as well.