Doored to Tears

I’m no Lewis. Nor am I a Clark. Yet, nature calls to me like an old friend with a baffling rotary phone obsession. Nature, as presently understood, refuses to text and doesn’t yet understood the ins and outs of social media. The only pinging comes after an unexpected electrical storm, when your metal plate rings off the head – at least until the rain subsides. Jack London understood that answering the call of the wild had nothing to do with voicemail, or the likes of preeminent phoneman, Antonio Meucci. 

Whether it’s the arrow hidden in the FedEx logo or a miniature silhouette of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch carefully placed between the U and P in the UPS logo, there’s a lot you might not notice beyond multinational delivery companies. Although, I’d be remiss to not mention the double helix depicting a DNA molecule beneath the DHL logo that’s only visible when viewing the letters through a powerful electron microscope. We use words and phrases without so much as a first thought. Forget second thoughts, since that requires too much thinking for the average recipient.

When the hiking hordes evangelize down trails and up hills, caught in a gorp-induced fever dream, one word keeps coming up: outdoors. They’re usually great, often good, but always, an asinine catchall term that denotes their desired locale. Nature itself isn’t enough – explaining why we’ve opted for the strength and resonance of the outdoors. But why? Why should communing with wild animals and thick bark have anything to do with doors? Doesn’t it strike anyone as odd to define something by what it’s not. Take me for example. Am I a man or a notdog? Don’t answer that. 

What do doors have to do with nature? Unless an old ship door is what we’re referring to, it seems strangely out of place. How often are we talking about the half-submerged flotsam rotting in the same weeds mobsters take their enemies to God’s Jersey shore? No more than a couple times a month. Certainly not enough to warrant the word's pervasiveness.

Nature is so much more than a place without doors. It is also a place without The Doors. Where bad poetry decays with the wilting flowers. Where Wordsworth and Whitman dominate instead. Frankly, wilderness also lacks windows and countertops. Why not bring that up? Do astronomers contextualize distant nebulae by an absence of crown molding or tin ceilings? Does the nonexistence of slate shingles and gutters come up when discussing interstellar travel? I don’t recall Richard Feynman talking about how the Apollo astronauts didn’t have to pick any invisible locks when touching down on the lunar surface.  

So don’t let the door hit you on your way outdoors.