In Episode 3 (Rewilding the Soul) Michael and I discussed how important "the woods" were to us growing up and how visiting nature and wilderness places continues to be a form of spiritual practice for us. Reflecting on the episode got me thinking about John Muir.
If you’re not familiar with Muir, he made significant contributions to the fields of geology and botany, and his advocacy for wilderness preservation was instrumental in shaping the National Park system. But what sets him apart from many scientists is that he approached the natural world not just with a scientific mind but with a heart attuned to mystery and a gift for telling nature's story. John Muir was more than just a scientist, more than just a mystic, and more than just a storyteller—he was all of these at once. His ability to integrate these roles allowed him to experience the world in its fullness and communicate truths that resonate deeply with us today.
One of my favorite examples of this is his account, A Wind Storm in the Forest. It was December 1874, and Muir found himself in Yosemite Valley during a massive winter storm. Rather than taking shelter, he hiked up to the top of a high ridge to observe the storm more closely. But that wasn’t enough. He decided to climb a 100-foot-tall Douglas Fir tree at the height of the storm to experience it even more directly.
Now, who climbed that tree? Was it John Muir the scientist, meticulously observing the movement of the tree’s top in the high winds? Was it John Muir the mystic, seeking to feel, in a deeply intuitive way, what a tree might experience during such a storm? Or was it John Muir the storyteller, gathering material for a story that would influence the hearts and minds of a culture increasingly separated from nature—hungry only for expansion and extraction?
The answer is: it was all of him. Muir climbed that tree as his whole self, embodying all of these roles at once. And because he approached the experience holistically, he could take in the storm in a way that was both scientific and transcendent, personal and universal. This act—this climbing of the tree in the midst of the storm—is a powerful metaphor for integration. Carl Jung might have called it a moment of individuation, when all aspects of the psyche align in a unified expression of being.
Muir spent hours at the top of the tree, swinging with it in the wind. As he did, he made scientific observations about the degree of motion in the tree’s upper branches. But he also had a mystical experience—an intuitive sense of what it might feel like to be the tree itself, a traveler buffeted by the elements. Later, in his writing, he brought this experience to life, weaving together his observations, his mystical insight, and his poetic imagination:
“We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and people; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings—many of them not so much.”
This ability to live fully in the moment, to embrace the storm with his whole being (the rational and the intuitive), and to communicate it so beautifully afterward is rare and sacred. At the center of the integrated Self or at the center of our highest being (or however you want to say it) is direct experience. This integration of roles—this wholeness—didn’t just happen by chance. Muir chose it. He chose to climb that tree, to embrace the storm, to risk the discomfort and danger of the unknown in pursuit of something deeper. This kind of wholeness requires courage. It demands that we confront the fragmentation within ourselves: the part that says, “Be practical, stay safe,” and the part that whispers, “Go higher, feel more, risk everything to see the world as it really is.”
To integrate the self is to climb the tree in the storm. It is to observe, to feel, to create—to bring the disparate pieces of who we are into alignment with one another. It is to let the scientist learn from the mystic, to let the mystic inspire the storyteller, to let the storyteller give voice to what cannot be measured or named.
And what of the world outside the self? What of the trees, the storms, the wilderness that Muir so loved? Here’s the real magic: when we climb the tree of the self, we discover that it is not separate from the forest. To experience wholeness is to recognize that we are part of a greater whole—that our movements, our bending and swaying, are intimately connected to the rhythms of the world around us.
Muir knew this. He didn’t just climb that tree to learn about it. He climbed it to become it, to lose himself in the wildness of the storm and find himself there as well. This is the paradox of wholeness: to be fully ourselves is to transcend the boundaries of self, to see our lives as part of the vast, interconnected web of life.
So, how do we climb the tree? How do we risk the storm and embrace the fullness of who we are? The answer lies in the choices we make each day. When we observe the world with curiosity, when we open ourselves to its mystery, when we create and share what we’ve found, we are climbing the tree. And like Muir, we may find at the top not just ourselves but the whole universe swaying with us in the wind.
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