This weekend’s epic canoe camping trip in the Adirondacks was filled with many incredible firsts for me including: sleeping outside literally in a thunderstorm, tying my food super high in a tree as to avoid bears, learning various techniques for drying out wet sticks so a fire could be made, filtering water from the lake to make it safe to drink, and acclimating myself to perform various tasks in total darkness. I tried my best to adapt as quickly as possible to the environment around me and familiarized myself with the various new smells, sights and sounds. The newness of the wild was thrilling, enlightening and scary at times. Taking myself outside of my comfort zone truly heightened my senses and even though I was only a mere 6 hours from home, I unexpectedly found this experience far more difficult than any adapting I have done before—even on trips to the other side of the world!

Of all my new experiences from the weekend, the most powerful first for me was trying to both identify and then become familiar with the many new sounds that surrounded me. For example, before this past weekend, I had never heard a loon call. However, after spending 4 days completely vulnerable to the bare elements of nature, it is a sound I will never forget!! (See video above for a very true depiction of this remarkable sound)

Today, sitting in Brooklyn, NY, I stopped and began to compare the two vastly different sensory experiences of my daily urban life vs. a day in the “wild.” It makes me realize just how adapted to city life I have become that I can now move about totally un-phased by the car alarms, sirens, construction noises, screeching bus breaks, music streaming out windows, various languages, and cell phones conversations I encounter daily. The noise and urban chaos, which when I first moved here felt so foreign, now feels so “comfortable.”  But after this weekend’s trip I think if I could adapt to living in the urban jungle- making it my “home,” I could also become fully acclimated to living in the middle of the woods on a lake. Would I ever choose to do so? Now that’s an entirely different topic….