Camping-induced nature angst

I hope you all had a fabulous Memorial Day! My husband and I went backpacking with our friend Jarrett in the Pecos Wilderness near Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was my first "real" camping experience -- meaning the first time I carried all my gear on my own back and hiked miles away from my car and real bathrooms. I know people do this all the time, but I've never been much of a camper. Thanks to a move last year to a area full of good camping sites and a nearby REI, I'm learning to be one.

Despite my quick realization that I packed way too much food and equipment (35 pounds) for hiking comfort, and despite our late realization that we took the wrong trail, I had an incredible time. The streams were swollen with snow melt and the wildflowers were starting to bloom.

But my moments of nature-bliss were balanced by a nagging sense of modern-woman unease. Does anyone else experience a profound sense of displacement when they venture into deep nature? I found myself acutely aware of how little I understood what was around me. What plant is that? How late in the day is it? Why haven't we seen any fish in the stream? I'm infinitely more at home in the artificial, built environment I live in every day. We may have spent the better part of the last few millennia trying to separate ourselves from the rest of the natural world, but humans were created/evolved (which ever you choose; I happen to believe in both) as part of it. Part of what the purpose of this blog is to promote ways of exploring our world without exploiting it. I'm just starting to realize how little I understand about my own environment and my place in it. How can I keep from exploiting what I don't understand? Has anyone else been humbled by their first forays into the wild? Any advice for starting to fill my unfathomably huge natural knowledge gap?
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