Brad Orsted Knows: Immersion In Nature Can Heal Worst Kind Of Pain
In new, long-awaited book, Montana photographer writes how wandering through grizzly and wolf country has helped him recover from young daughter's tragic death
Moving through wild country that still holds grizzlies and wolves can help humans nurture a higher level of awareness often dulled by city living, depression or trauma that comes with the modern world. Orsted titled this portrait of a Yellowstone wolf pack "A Family Affair." You can see more of Orsted's photography at bradleyorsted.com
EDITOR'S NOTE: The piece below is an adapted excerpt from Bradley Orsted's new memoir Through the Wilderness: My Journey of Redemption and Healing in the American Wild (St. Martin's Press). Also read a conversation between Mountain Journal and Orsted that explored how coming to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has helped him on a perpetual, never-ending journey of trying to cope with the loss of his daughter, his subsequent struggle with alcoholism and his work today as nature photographer and cinematographer. —Todd Wilkinson
by Bradley Orsted
More than once, I would be clumsily plodding along, trying to out-hike addiction, feeling so broken and alone along the trail, then something would happen. Something unplanned yet as necessary as breathing. My ears would start to buzz like cicadas, and I would feel an electricity in the air. I could smell each individual pine needle I was stepping on. I would get the feeling like I was being watched— but not in a creepy way.
More that everything around me—trees, rocks, juniper, and all wildlife, especially the birds—knew me, and I knew them. Like I belonged there and we had done this before. I was finally home among my kin.
Shortly after Marley’s death, I avoided REM sleep because I feared my dreams. There was no break-off point between my waking life and the horrors I relived every night. There seemed to be no escaping the theater of loss. I felt the healing power take hold in Montana, and lands where grizzly bears and gray wolves roam, and where their ability to persist bodes favorably for hundreds of other species. But I recognized nature as a life-saving balm before I arrived in southwest Montana.
One particular morning, I woke early from another terrible nightmare where I walked out of our house in Waukazoo Woods on a morning stroll, like I would do with Marley, but there was no Marley. I was alone, and it hurt like hell. Then I noticed our wooded neighborhood was oddly quiet. I continued to walk and weep in my dream until I couldn’t take the silence anymore. Then I noticed it was the birds—or their absence, more precisely—that made every- thing so quiet. Our neighborhood typically bustled with robins, woodpeckers, owls, chickadees, and numerous other songbirds, but on this morning walk without Marley, there were no birds or birdsong.
The earth was completely hushed. Not even the ever-present wind off Lake Michigan blew through the giant beechwood trees. I scanned and scanned the skies and shrubs for any signs of feathered life, but I could not see or hear any birds anywhere.
Dreamily, I checked the always-reliable lilac and forsythia hedges for little brown birds bustling about, but it was dead air. There were no squirrels, deer, or even mosquitos in the densely wooded lots. The lonely revelation settled over me that I was the only living being in a wasteland, as I began to trot and panic, trying to find one other living creature in my neighborhood. It was the loneliest I had ever felt in my life.
I buried that dream deep inside of me and poured vodka on it to keep it woozy, until one boring day along the trail, my subconscious decided it was time to deal with it.
A flock of cedar waxwings flew in, moving in striking unison and calling, from juniper to cedar trees. They seemed to be following me and only emitted their collective high-pitched bzeee sound while in flight. Their movements were entrancing, and I began to “feel” their calls.
For the first time in years, I remembered that terrible dream of a world without Marley and birds. I immediately began to cry with tears of gratitude for this flock of cedar waxwings I was sharing a gulley with. They were the most beautiful birds I had ever seen in my life. I closed my eyes and listened to their buzzing song that sounded more like a flock of giant bees, until it trailed off in circular divinations somewhere down the ravine. A strange yet calm sentiment settled over. That flock of waxwings had flown off with my deep-rooted and painful memory, replacing it with a higher vibration of love and gratitude. I felt like I was right where I was supposed to be—alive and in the wild.
It got so that I felt more at home crawling over and under dead-fall pine trees than I did sitting in my living room. Nature had become a most gracious hospice. She asked nothing of me except to be present, and in return, nature reminded me I was always home and always had a home. That wherever I went, if there was dirt underfoot, I was home. Home in the mountains of the Northern Rockies. Home in the cities. Home within myself. Wherever my feet touched the earth—I was home.
Nature had become a most gracious hospice. She asked nothing of me except to be present, and in return, nature reminded me I was always home and always had a home. That wherever I went, if there was dirt underfoot, I was home. Home in the mountains of the Northern Rockies. Home in the cities. Home within myself. Wherever my feet touched the earth—I was home.
But that was the easy part. The hard part came when I finally had to lie down with my irreversible pain and grief. I had already quit numbing my agony with alcohol. But like in AA, they say recovery is the opposite of surgery. In recovery, first we remove the anesthesia, and then we start cutting. Now with the luxury of anesthesia removed, I was feeling everything, some of it for the first time, and hiking harder and harder trying to outrun these new, big feelings.
I had to embrace the grief. To understand I would never understand what happened to Marley that fateful day at my mom’s house and somehow be okay with it. To finally come to terms with the fact that the loss of a child never heals—it just doesn’t.
I had to walk hundreds of miles and spend hundreds of hours far away from people to let that one sink in. I had to take a hard look at that place inside a daddy that he holds for his daughter. That part inside of me that had been mangled beyond recognition. So I began field surgery on it, trying to put the pieces back together again and save what wasn’t maggot-filled. Without the aid of drugs, alcohol, self- loathing, or compartmentalizing, I rolled my sleeves up and started cutting away what wasn’t serving me anymore.
I had to learn what true monastic suffering was, sober-style. Before we lost Marley, I thought a serious bout of food poisoning, being way too cold, or going without love was suffering. These are discomforts. Most of life’s agonies are mere discomforts that resolve themselves in time. But true suffering in a healthy place is vital to recovery when the wound is so deep and permanent there is no escape.
About Bradley Orsted
Brad Orsted is an award-winning wildilfe filmmaker/photographer and author of Through the Wilderness: My Journey of Redemption and Healing in the American Wild (St. Martin's Press). He lives in Big Timber, Montana, near the banks of the Yellowstone River, with the Crazy Mountains rising to the near and the Absarokas to the south. You may see him on a backcountry trail in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem with camera in hand and bear spray at the ready on his hip. You can find Brad by clicking here.
