Response to outside reading “On the Spiritual Benefits of Wilderness” by Baylor Johnson/ by Mikey Famiglietti

The sublimity of wild nature humbles us, minimizing the importance of our individual selves, yet comforting us with its own grandeur” (Johnson).

Wild nature leads us to experience the sensation of self-forgetting and also comforts us in the idea that our worries and problems…that seem to be so important and central to us…are nothing in the big scheme of things. When we are not noticed by society we feel insignificant…we are left feeling empty and upset. It reminds us that we have not achieved anything society sees as significant…we have not met the expectations of others. But on the other hand, being insignificant can be comforting. By demeaning our desires and weaknesses, we realize that that our worries are too small to produce any disturbance in the big scheme of things and therefore are also very insignifcant.