Landing at the Denver airport on a flight from Alamosa, Colorado, I am confronted with hundreds of acres of concrete under which nature has been forever buried. Entering the terminal there are scores of people, all of whom seem to be either in a terrible rush or bored senseless by endless waiting. In every direction there is something for sale. The jets we all will board will disrupt the silence for thousands of miles.

Having just returned from a week in Colorado’s celestial Sangre de Cristo Mountains, camping at an elevation of 10,000 feet, with five 14,000-foot summits towering above me, surrounded by groves of large ponderosas and aspen trees, mountain streams, and open savannahs of juniper and pinion pine, I am not prepared to reenter post-industrial society so rapidly.

I had shared the previous week surrounded by mule deer, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, pronghorn antelope, black bear, and 3beautiful black fox squirrels, with eagles circling above.

For four days I was entirely alone to reflect, meditate, write, sit quietly, experience the wilderness, listen to my heart and spirit, and chart the path for the rest of my life. No computer, phone, or newspapers. I did not speak to anyone other than the animals, flowers, water, and trees. For three and a half days I fasted.

The conversations I had with pine trees and hummingbirds were unlike those that awaited me at the Denver airport. My newfound appreciation for the boundless gifts that nature provides us sharply contrasted with the gluttonous consumption and ecological destruction that jet age transportation has come to symbolize. For most of my life I boarded these big, petroleum-consuming birds without a second thought. Now I wonder if anyone has asked for permission to share the sky with nature’s other inhabitants.

To eyes that had just been rinsed clear by my complete immersion in it, nature was no longer a set of natural resources that we measure, analyze, and seek to protect. For 21 years I have led a business that seeks to protect an environment I don’t think I ever understood. It’s not about the protection of rain forests and species diversity, pure water, spotted owls, and wildlife corridors. It’s about rediscovering the part of us that is part of all that. Experiencing that we are nature. Understanding that we are part of the same system we seek to protect. That nature is willing to provide for us, but that we must ask permission first and thank her for the gifts she so graciously provides.

The time I spent alone was both wonderful and quite painful. Never have I watched blades of grass dance in the wind for hours on end, felt bolts of lightning in my heartbeat or followed two grasshoppers across a vast expanse of brush. The space to do these things also allowed me to feel the sadness created by what I now see is a separation from my own source of being. It showed me the reactive impatience of my own life and the briefness of the time in which we live the lives that we hold so dearly.

The vision quest I experienced was designed and inspired by John P. Milton. In the late 1970s, Milton moved to Crestone, Colorado and discovered the ancient stone meditation seats that fill this land. An estimated two thousand such seats cluster here in what is the largest aggregation of such sacred sites in the world.

John’s biography would fill many pages so this is only a brief taste of the history of an amazing man. Between 1963 and 1972, John directed the International Programs Division of the Conservation Foundation, now a part of the World Wildlife Fund. Between 1966 and 1973, he led two major programs to transform cultural awareness of the ecological impacts of development and wrote a 1070-page book entitled The Careless Technology: Ecology and International Development.

In the early 1970’s, John was the first ecologist on staff at the White House, working with the President’s Council of Economic Advisors. He went on to become a Resident Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Around the same time, he established Threshold, a foundation devoted to combining innovative environmental work with the spiritual liberation found in the natural world. Later came Sacred Passage and The Way of Nature Fellowship, programs that inspire Earth stewardship by cultivating natural wisdom and an open, loving heart in the wild. All this work demonstrated John’s lifelong devotion to the mystery of Gaia and to the process of human liberation, which he believed was achieved by allowing deep ecological and spiritual values to guide one’s own path.

My own path led me to New York. When I arrived my wife sensed a calm in me that she had never before experienced. That calm, a passion for being present, reflective, loving, and kind is a gift I hope to carry with me until I return to the wilderness to deepen my connection to the wellspring from which we all have come.