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My parents (as were others) felt I was wasting time and education paddling a canoe. 

True, but for me formal education was too narrow and limiting. Learning, obviously enough, is not limited to books. The intrigues of theoretical physics were less meaningful to me than the physics of wind (gasses) and waves (fluids) meeting the solids of paddle, hull and shore. 

Urbanized and removed from elemental nature, the human being remains well adapted to learning of life and nature from little more than placing a stick (paddle or oar) in the water or applying a surface (sail) to replace muscle force. 

If I wished to be insulting I’d say the noble University of Minnesota was too dumb (in an old sense of the word) to consider direct, elemental learning. The tower of ivory rises from base elements but too easily convinces itself of being someway higher, aloof, elevated from its source. 

A pity, especially when those fortunate enough to engage elementally can give evidence of challenges and satisfactions unknown to degrees of MA or BS.  

 In a (non-love related) romantic sense it might seem I’m touting a mystical humanity-nature connection. Not really. Humans and nature are intermixed, as easily seen (I’ll argue) in most all us folk being able to tell two sheets of paper or two coffee filters from one with essentially zero training to do so. 

We’re wired for alertness, the individual who seldom steps from fluorescent lighting and central climate control is gifted same as those daily immersed in the out-of-doors. An inclination toward reading the wild is not, I strongly suspect, an ethnic, racial or cultural gift available to some groups more than others. Except, that is, in terms of environmental experience with, as example, snow drifts versus sand dunes. 

In a fair and equitable universe habitable terrain would all be on a level zone of rainfall, temperature, frontage and soil types. Or maybe two zones so we’d avoid the steamy equator. Awareness or utility of local conditions is experience, not a special inbred gift.  

 Coming to Minnesota from Southside Chicago where the closest nature was (depending on wind) the distinctive smell of the stockyards, I had small basis for the outdoors. And yet, same as you I suspect, the pull of nature was there. 

Canoe guiding (in total approx. 30 summers spent sleeping so often on the ground a bed and four walls felt confining) I’d not more than stick my nose out the tent flaps for nature’s messages to text in. 

Other pursuits have the same quick start advantage, one I especially needed to drive factors into my urbanized head. Humidity, temperature, scent and breeze are part of the morning report, hints of what the day might hold in store. Nothing special about it. 

The same content information greeting the outdoor infant systems manager as hit me, only experience mattered (a little). More importantly nature wasn’t impressed by experience nor did it reveal more to one than another. Nature ignored my resume of acquired skills same as it paid no heed to my egotistic folly. 

The day was what it would be. Rain like all fury or bake us in a stifling swelter, each day came and went on its own. My task (notably human as I see it) was to adapt as I went. The unforgiving equity of nature is wondrous. 

 For (probably most readers) those not boggled by (as y’rs tr’ly is) their own pretensions, a kick in the noggin by nature might not be needed as it was for me to come clean and be less a primal pain. There are fortunates who don’t need an entire house to collapse atop them in order to catch on. 

Not me. I favor the harder way. As example, the white water of a rolling rapid appeared so nice and inviting until I wandered happily in only to discover. What? The roil of white water is white because it’s full of fluffy, frothy air. No problem, right? Wrong. Very wrong. 

White water dancing upward in a rapid is essentially a vertical hole. Aerated white water is less dense, less able to support a body or a canoe, so down you go into an effective hole in the water. Deceptive on the surface, but obvious when considered. 

If you paddle along online for long you’ll soon see modern sources ogling over mysteries of the ancients, as example moving great rocks or shaping precious stone. We gape. How did they do it? Not, for certain, by hurling power tools at tasks. 

The answer is in doing, in having hands, eyes and mind learn to manage the seeming impossible. 

 Using the stick (paddle) in the water analogy is, of course, overly simplistic, but it does illustrate. 

Use of power does not change the nature of nature. A doctoral degree in advanced physics does not tame a lake or make paddling substantially easier. Playing the system by applying power instead of paddle can work, maybe. But there’s a good chance speeding into nasty conditions will possibly get one into trouble more quickly and leave the parties as dead or injured as did the old-fashioned way. Whether a wave hits you with a 150-pound object or you’re the object thrown the result is a beating. 

 But, we don’t turn to nature to be abused, do we? 

There are other reasons we head to the great outdoors and enjoy it despite dangers, labors, frustrations, mosquitoes and all the many other fellow passengers with a taste for our blood. 

In the animal or natural world we are popular, as food. When I guided I’d hear visitors complain of all the bugs. But what would you expect? A lot of hard-living underfed bugs were more than happy to see juicy, well-fed urban fare brought to the picnic. Deer flies looked forward to easy-living urban-ranged meat instead of grizzled loggers and bush rats. 

Plus, broken out in welts, we can take some comfort knowing we were important to the sex lives of insects. Feast, breed and die applies in nature. How different than that are we?