I realized too late that my previous decades-long acceptance of nature had been due to peer pressure from non-New Yorkers. The fact of the matter was that like Florence, I had no affinity for it. And in my case, as time went on, visits to the country or similar places were only tolerated if at the end there was a promise of food, sex or a train ride home.
A recent urging that I visit more pastoral settings to encourage some relaxation during a stressful time was met with a determined no until I was reassured it could happen in a near-by city park. Those trees counted.
However, wondering down Delancey Street I passed the parking lot where my father's Valiant four door green car named Charlie Brown had lived for years. And there I saw how nature was to me.
8 comments:
My sister who lives near the middle of nowhere in WV (actually four minutes from a minute hamlet and ten miles from a larger town) would be freaked out by people around all the time and noise and concrete, while a lot of people are horrified by being around silence or out of reach of human-made stuff and in the thick of bugs and underbrush.
I think what one gets used to is one's comfort zone.
I do go out into the wilderness but not that far, and tend to be in survival mode (water, map, compass, layers of clothing, whiskey).
Human beings have spent several thousand years systematically destroying the natural world becasue we are an unnatural species. We like a controlled and manipulated environment. Even the farmer adjusts reality to suit himself. Ever notice how annoyed we get when nature invades our pristine space; a fly, a mouse, a roach, a stray leaf on our lawn, a dandelion...we go ballistic until we get it out of our space. Four walls and high speed internet, that's our nature!
internet and whiskey. I've just added to my definition of nature I can live in.
Great post. I love the woods as well as city but i hate driving and have to drive constantly. No subways in this joint and the buses...well.
It's all nature I suppose. Even the whiskey.
CO - Depends on what you're raised with right? Too long in a city and I feel like a part of me is dying - too long in the country and I feel like a part of me is dying . . . too long in the suburbs and I feel like all of me is dying . . .
So we seek the compromise that works.
T.
Interesting perspective. I was born and raised in a very natural area, but feel I am helping it more now by living in the city and not destroying it with my presence. As a result, he little bits of nature I find in the city mean even more to me, like little diamonds on a trash heap. :)
I am beginning to wonder if I should have named this post Call of the Wild or They Paved Paradise ....
I still feel happier in that parking lot setting than I do in other places not near concrete.
I like traveling in more pastoral settings, but I get impatient once I get there and want to come back. It's a nice escape but I think you have to train yourself to enjoy it which for me would mean either putting out money to enjoy ( a train ticket or cost of lodging) or getting there with no easy escape route.
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