THE "WILD" WEST

BY MONET YELSNICK

There are countless documentaries about rare wildlife that make the natural world seem, so action packed, so exciting, and so wild. What you don't see is that the photographers have been sitting in a shack for three months staring out a little hole to catch a glimpse of these animals in their most exciting moments. Not every day in the life of a bear in the woods is a thrilling life or death movie trailer. These documentaries are edutainment, and analogous to how an Instagram page is a highlight reel of all the parts of our lives worth sharing, so too is a wildlife documentary. They do it because unless it's your full-time job, most of us simply can't. That being said, we already have an abundance of wildlife around us that we can often take for granted because they are a nuisance, they are familiar, or we just haven't been shown our relationship to them and the land we inhabit.

If you live in a major city, you almost certainly have access to squirrels, pigeons, rats, seagulls, raccoons, possums, etc., not to mention the vast varieties of birds– and if you live near water? Go ahead and triple the number of animals you can think of. As with everything in our modern world, even the concept of the wild, of nature, has been commodified to sell back to us by making us feel we haven't experienced "real" nature or haven't seen the "real" wild animals. It makes us believe we need to book a particular vacation or watch a specific series to see what the "real" wild is all about. Still, I promise you, you have seen it.

The city you live in was once an untamed patch of land where animals lived. There were no buildings, no roads, no people. The trees were so thick you couldn't see farther than ten feet in front of you, and it was pitch black at night unless there was a full moon. The creatures of the area lived the way you see in the documentaries. They still live there now, they have just adapted to the change of their landscape, and they would adjust back and make the place that kind of wild all over again if we suddenly vanished. Instead of squirrels foraging wild mushrooms and nuts in the city, they add in a little human trash too. In addition to eagles hunting rabbits and other smaller birds, sometimes they now snatch up our pets. The wild is still right here, right now, all around us, and we are part of it.

'Outdoors' and 'being in nature' is relative. Not everyone can hike a rugged trail or even a gravel trail. If you have a prosthetic leg or use a wheelchair, you may face access and safety issues. Maybe you don't live in a place that feels very safe to venture out into a wooded area. Not all of us can (or even like to) go boating or camping, but that doesn't make your relationship with the outdoors any less important, impactful, or real. Your local park, the patch of earth you sit in your backyard to listen to the birds, sitting near your apartment window to listen to the rain and the wind; these are all ways of experiencing the outdoors–whether you do it from a tent, a trail, or a velvet wing-back chair.

In my early twenties, I was working 70 hours a week, and I lived in a tiny apartment in a crowded city, just far enough from the park that I couldn't bear to walk there after a 13-hour shift. I still craved connection with the outside, so (living in the rainy state that I do) I moved my bed next to the only window in my room, and I would turn off the lights and lay with my head out the window to be rained on. Does that sound absolutely bizarre typing it out just now? Yes. It really does. But that was all my bandwidth allowed for at the time and it did the trick and was real for me. However, you can experience the outdoors, I encourage you to do it. Try sitting on your porch with your eyes closed and seeing how many different animals you can hear, listening to the rustle of the trees, and thinking about the wind, this invisible force that moves these giants. Go for a walk around your neighborhood, set up a birdbath or bird feeder (you'll definitely get a lot of squirrels that way, too!). Pretend you are a wildlife photographer one evening and sit at your window trying to capture the most exciting footage of crows you can. You may not be signing up for season 8 of Alone anytime soon, but you're still getting the real wild deal, I promise.

Monet Yelsnick is a musician and outdoor enthusiast in Seattle, WA

www.hikeitofflife.com