I can say based off of personal experience that there is something about being completely swallowed up by nature and having to defy its harsh elements that we as humans find to be undeniably comforting. In Edward Abbey's tenacious essay titled "Havasu," Abbey is pitted against the elements of mother nature when he finds himself marooned at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in the dynamically hostile environment known as Havasu. Rather than looking at his situation with despair, Abbey viewed at it almost like a vacation and experienced pure euphoria when being forced to to brace himself against the challenges and obstacles thrown his way. Abbey also displays through his constant endurance how humans beings, even when in the face of death, can find a great amount of pleasure in being alone and conquering the unforeseen. .
I believe that there is something that stems from the natural instincts of all human beings that causes us to long for the opportunity to be alone in nature. It's not hard to see this due to the very fact that a majority of the time man has been walking on earth, he's been eating, sleeping, and breathing by the ways of the bush. Only for the last thousand years or so have humans been living in orderly societies run by technology relative to their particular time period, but before that, humans lived in Earth's completely natural conditions free of technology and infrastructure for tens of thousands of years. Along with our instinctual desire to dissolve into nature, I think it's also safe to say that the feeling we derive from being able to escape society and conquer the twisted conditions of nature is infinitely satisfying. This is why today in modern society we have cave spelunkers, mountain climbers, extreme scuba divers, rainforest explorers, desert wanderers, and so forth as these are the select few whose primordial attraction to nature has not been eclipsed by the stagnant conditions of society.
