Hi Thom. I have read that 85 percent of humans now live in cities. I grew up in the Great Plains, loaded with grasses and flowers, farm crops and, thanks to FDR, many trees planted to combat soil erosion from over-cultivation. To escape my mother's rage-aholic addictions, I spent lots of time either climbing and sitting in trees, or wandering along the warm sloughs or shelterbelts of Nebraska, a plains state that, in the 50s-60s, had abundant surface and ground waters. I was often kind of terrified by my mom, as was my sister, but I could escape into Nature, while she could not.
Although I feel I am a gregarious human, much of my life has been spent in the wild, alone with my observations, but completely immersed in plant and animal energies. I have lived in an inter-mountain state in the SW for decades, a huge state with few humans and tons of plant and animal life. As a forester and ecologist, I work inside this quantum entanglement of wonder. Since moving here long ago, I lost all experiences of childhood illnesses, colds, flu, most allergies, insect bites, coughs, etc. But I am also a journalist and educator, so I am well aware of the mayhem that humanity has unleashed upon Nature and itself, so I experience a fair amount of angst.
But never for long. I walk out the door into a dryland forest, with more than a thousand trees within a radius of 500 ft. And that is just the immediate area i work within. I am surrounded by perhaps 25000 acres of pinon/juniper forest, loaded with oaks, cottonwood, mountain mahogany, chamisa, currants, cacti, and hundreds of species of grasses and forbs. I rarely feel ill, and if I do, it is gone in a few hours or a day at most. And always, within a minute, I experience calm, which energizes me incredibly. I walk a fairly hilly terrain daily, working with trees, grasses, forbs, dirt, dried plant materials and fairly pristine skies, even in this era of pollution. Humidity is usually low to moderate. I manage a rural property, so I water quite a few native trees, and perhaps 200 introduced trees and shrubs, most of which are native but grow in more moist conditions. I also feed hundreds of birds, usually 5-6 pounds of seeds and worms every day.
My daughter lives with me, but works in a small city nearby doing housecleaning. She is often ill, sometimes for days, but I never come down with anything she suffers from. What you have described is the immense power of Nature, the primal source of all biotic life, all connected, all related, interchangeable, intra-dependantly responsible for all other components of that whole.
We observe the idiotic and self-destructive mayhem of DC, NYC, LA, SF, Chicago et. al., and the disconnected and lonely, miserable and rage-filled confusions that eminate from those places, and we scratch our heads at the chaos that ensues, chaos concerning Nothing essential to peaceful existence. Is it any wonder why Tolkien chose Hobbits as the humanoids most capable of doing
more with less, because they intuited that less was actually more?
Hi Thom. I have read that 85 percent of humans now live in cities. I grew up in the Great Plains, loaded with grasses and flowers, farm crops and, thanks to FDR, many trees planted to combat soil erosion from over-cultivation. To escape my mother's rage-aholic addictions, I spent lots of time either climbing and sitting in trees, or wandering along the warm sloughs or shelterbelts of Nebraska, a plains state that, in the 50s-60s, had abundant surface and ground waters. I was often kind of terrified by my mom, as was my sister, but I could escape into Nature, while she could not.
Although I feel I am a gregarious human, much of my life has been spent in the wild, alone with my observations, but completely immersed in plant and animal energies. I have lived in an inter-mountain state in the SW for decades, a huge state with few humans and tons of plant and animal life. As a forester and ecologist, I work inside this quantum entanglement of wonder. Since moving here long ago, I lost all experiences of childhood illnesses, colds, flu, most allergies, insect bites, coughs, etc. But I am also a journalist and educator, so I am well aware of the mayhem that humanity has unleashed upon Nature and itself, so I experience a fair amount of angst.
But never for long. I walk out the door into a dryland forest, with more than a thousand trees within a radius of 500 ft. And that is just the immediate area i work within. I am surrounded by perhaps 25000 acres of pinon/juniper forest, loaded with oaks, cottonwood, mountain mahogany, chamisa, currants, cacti, and hundreds of species of grasses and forbs. I rarely feel ill, and if I do, it is gone in a few hours or a day at most. And always, within a minute, I experience calm, which energizes me incredibly. I walk a fairly hilly terrain daily, working with trees, grasses, forbs, dirt, dried plant materials and fairly pristine skies, even in this era of pollution. Humidity is usually low to moderate. I manage a rural property, so I water quite a few native trees, and perhaps 200 introduced trees and shrubs, most of which are native but grow in more moist conditions. I also feed hundreds of birds, usually 5-6 pounds of seeds and worms every day.
My daughter lives with me, but works in a small city nearby doing housecleaning. She is often ill, sometimes for days, but I never come down with anything she suffers from. What you have described is the immense power of Nature, the primal source of all biotic life, all connected, all related, interchangeable, intra-dependantly responsible for all other components of that whole.
We observe the idiotic and self-destructive mayhem of DC, NYC, LA, SF, Chicago et. al., and the disconnected and lonely, miserable and rage-filled confusions that eminate from those places, and we scratch our heads at the chaos that ensues, chaos concerning Nothing essential to peaceful existence. Is it any wonder why Tolkien chose Hobbits as the humanoids most capable of doing
more with less, because they intuited that less was actually more?