There Is No Pristine Wilderness: A Realization About Relationship

Today I had a profound realization:

To survive, to practice the skills of living with the land, there is no such thing as pristine wilderness.

Every piece of land is already in relationship with someone. Every forest, meadow, shoreline, or park has a history of human hands, human tending, human presence—sometimes nurturing, sometimes destructive, but always present. There is no wild place untouched by people. There is only land in relationship.

For a long time, I believed that to practice survival skills I needed a place I could disappear into—somewhere untouched, somewhere “pure,” somewhere empty of human influence.

But the deeper I go, the more I understand:

To be in relationship with the land, I have to be in relationship with people, too.

This truth is frustrating, but also strangely liberating. It reveals why I’ve been blocked in my practice for so long. I wasn’t avoiding wilderness—I was avoiding relationship. And now, after years of developing relational skills through Reiki, consent work, community care, and healing, I finally feel ready.

A Vision Through Remote Viewing

This realization came to me while practicing remote viewing—one of the ways I build up my meditation muscles. Remote viewing, for me, involves command breath, segmented body relaxation, the white-light encasing, dissolving pain, body awareness, gravity, flying, and breath to surrender. From that grounded, open state, I imagine myself walking into a place I’ve only ever seen the entrance of, asking questions to the land:

What is ahead? What is waiting for me? What am I meant to learn here?

This time, I asked a sacred question:

“Is there a place ahead where I can practice survival skills?”

The answer came back clearly: yes.

And then I saw it—a huge pile of big leaf maple leaves, resting on a golf course of all places. At first I laughed. But then something clicked:

those leaves were the shelter.

They were the exact medicine for the question I had asked.

I realized I could simply ask the golf course if I could take the leaves for compost. They likely see them as a nuisance—not the soil-building, shelter-creating resource they truly are.

That’s when I understood:I don’t need untouched land. I need relationship. Relationship with the people who tend the land. Relationship with the land itself. Relationship with community.

Building Shelter as Relationship Practice instead of "Wilderness"

With these leaves, all I’d need are some sturdy straight sticks—big leaf maple or alder for beams; hemlock or Douglas fir for the lattice. Then the leaf pile goes on top, and the structure becomes a living conversation with the forest.

Me demo-ing a shelter frame and basics under a Redwood Tree.

I also thought about the redwoods in Lincoln Park. They naturally create a shelter space beneath them; their branches curve too much for beams, but a few straight alder poles would complete the space beautifully. The land is already offering what is needed.

Everything becomes a teacher when I stop trying to escape relationship.

This Is the Heart of Wild Nature Reiki

At Wild Nature Reiki, the work is always about relationship—touch, consent, land, body, spirit, community. Today’s realization reminded me that survival skills, too, are relational skills. They aren’t about escaping into solitude. They’re about listening, tending, asking permission, collaborating, and being of service to the places and people who hold us.

There is no pristine wilderness.There is only relationship—messy, beautiful, interwoven.

And maybe that’s the real survival skill I’ve been learning all along.