More and more, I become resentful of the way the city stifles natural life. It does not allow us to be most fully human, in the animal sense. The city does not offer physical challenges. It homogenizes, streamlines and flattens.
Our bodies desire a physical topography to climb and struggle against gravity within. The city’s paved roads, and sidewalks are too flat and uninteresting for our feet. There is no exciting shifts of weight and challenges to our balance available. Similarly, our eyes are bored by the grey squares of asphalt. What a far cry from the stony path of nature, wherein the eyes extend along the horizon and inform the body about what to expect, as the body maneuvers itself around puddles of mud, over boulders and anthills, making every step rich with action and meaning.
Each tiny victory of avoiding a puddle empowers the body and mind, makes us more ourselves – beings who necessarily experience their aliveness through the interaction between their physical selves and the less-than-perfect conditions nature provides.
But a couple of weeks ago, I felt the glorious retreat to my hardy human self at Point Reyes; the western-most edge of the north bay. Voluptuous rollings hills of green along the horizon, sometimes hidden by moist mist and fog. In the morning, a clearing sky invited us to hike the five mile path from the hostel to the shore and back. Bodies heaved themselves up hills and a dynamically rocky topography flanked us on both sides. Sometimes it was thickly wooded and other times it was vast brush and grass.
Reaching the water’s edge, silence falls among us both because of the awesome sight to behold and for the loud overwhelming crashing and roaring of an unfathomably majestic ocean.
Sand, pristine, fine-grained, beige. Sun streaming, commanding yellow. Ocean breeze flitting about, blowing against our skin with enviable self-assuredness. I cry for the realization of what I daily miss. I cry for the feeling of coming home as I stand on that unfamiliar shore.
The city does not invite one to stand erect and proud, watching the ocean write, feeling the wind blow away one’s worries from the brow.
The city makes a woman unreceptive at best, or maybe clam up; from the smog, the disharmonious grunts of engines and motors, the shadowy corners cast by the hubris of skyscrapers.
Once upon a time, I loved the city for its hustle and bustle, its human-filled spaces. Times have changed me to wonder how our cities may one day allow us to actually be human the way nature encourages, while not requiring us to exist within the complete solitude of a faraway campsite.
I wonder: can we strive for the best of both worlds? A physically dynamic, expansive, nature-filled landscape where men and women live, work, play?
Can’t our work buildings be less monotonous than skycrapers?
Can’t our streets be more nurturing than paved city roads?
Can’t we be fully human in the space we spend most of our time, rather than only on the weekend retreats and getaways, afforded by only so few…