"Nature is inconvenient, you know. Its temperature is often uncomfortable, its weather disuptive and occasionally dangerous. It is dirty. And tending to the body's demands can be so tedious. 'This hurts; do something,' it whines. 'Eat this but not that. I'm thirsty. Pee soon. Tired, go to sleep.' Civilized life is so much more comfortable, so much easier. How wonderful to be able to protect the body from Nature's vagaries and from its own sharp needs. How luxurious then to have one's attention free for other things-- for the complexities of civilized life, for example. To live in the woods for a time with only what can be carried on my back is intentionally to strip away the comfort and control that protect me (and wall me off) from Nature. Although I enjoy being outside at other times, those are essentially quite controlled experiences: to walk outside when the weather's nice is to keep Nature as an adjunct to my experince, with myself still at the centre. But to live outside day after day is to experience Nature as central. My small barriers of sleeping bag or dry socks are so minor compared to my usual protection of a house with a hot shower.

When I hike in trhe rain, my first response is to run for cover. I'm in the real world, remember, not my contrived world. Eventually I accept, my body accepts, that if it rains I'll get wet. It might even feel good. With the consistent force of pressure that Nature acquires under these circumstances, I have no choice but to give in. My sense of myself as ending at my skin fades, my boundaries diffuse. My illusion of centrality and control dwindle down to something small and silly. I talk less, laugh more and louder. I live in and for my body. Where else? Why else?"

--Marcia Hill