Back to Earth: A Backpacker's Journey Into Self and SoulBack to Earth is the powerful, personal journey of a man in his middle years who senses that he has drifted away from the ideals of his youth and who must now search for coherence, belief, and a renewed spirituality following the breakup of his marriage and family. Living alone in a cabin in the woods, Temple searches his past and tells tales of experiences backpacking in Colorado, Dakota, New Mexico and Alaska. His reflections focus on the spiritual and redemptive qualities of nature, the American character, and the dilemmas of the split between matter and spirit, body and soul, God and creation. As an "earnest pilgrim with a short attention span", Temple's story chronicles his journey from an intimacy with the earth to an alienation from it, and the need of all humans to find a redemptive reunion. The book is a kind of pilgrimage as the author tries to get back home, to find God, to learn what our species once knew, and to rediscover the heart and soul of creation. |
Contents
CHAPTER 1 | |
CHAPTER 2 | |
CHAPTER 3 | |
CHAPTER 4 | |
CHAPTER 5 | |
CHAPTER 6 | |
CHAPTER 7 | |
CHAPTER 8 | |
CHAPTER 10 | |
CHAPTER 11 | |
CHAPTER 12 | |
CHAPTER 13 | |
CHAPTER 14 | |
CHAPTER 15 | |
Epilogue | |
Acknowledgments | |
Common terms and phrases
animals backpacking beauty Bernd Big Horns Black Elk blue bobcat bone breath cabin camp canyon cliffs climb Cloud Peak clouds cold comes creek dark deer Devon Island distant downhill drive eagle earth eyes face feel feet felt Ford Pinto forest Geneva Pass Gila Wilderness gone grass head hiked holy horizon human knew lake Lakota land landscape learned leaving Leopold light listen Little Soldier living lodge looking mountain nature neutrinos night once pine polynya pond pray rain red-tailed hawk remember ridge Ring Thunder river road rock rocky Russell Means sense snow Sometimes I think soul South Dakota species spirit splash spot stand stare stars stone stopped sunlight sweat sweat lodge talk things thought Thunder trail trees trying universe vision quest walk wanted Wasichus watch wild wilderness wind winter wonder woods wrote