I won’t start this with a rant on how terrible cars are. There is much to be said there, about how our land allocation, financing, resources, time, and more are poured down the car industry pipeline to make everything worse for mostly everyone, but that’s not going to change overnight. I am here to share how I’ve been trying to provide a semblance of a relationship with nature - both for my daughter and myself. It’s an uphill climb, but we try.
I grew up in a house with a garden, back when people could afford to live in landed houses and sustain a household on a single income. I spent my childhood climbing trees, playing in a sandpit, feeding chickens with grubs we found in the compost, attempting to make tiny pots with mud, and running around barefooted.
For most of my adult life, I’ve lived in an apartment. A little box in the sky in which we make our home. It’s nice and cosy, and we like the views, but every now and then I am reminded that it’s akin to floating through life. We’re earthly creatures and we need our grounding. I need my feet to touch the soil. So I go in search of green spaces.
Now, I’m not as good at it as I’d like. We go a few times a month, at best. I wish it were more accessible. I wish I could go downstairs and walk six minutes to a park. It’s deeply unfair that modern life has now restricted access to nature for the rich. Those who can afford a multi-million dollar house can have their patch of grass, or actual walking paths to a nearby park. The rest of us are left confined within concrete boxes next to elevated three-lane highways. We’d be lucky to see a few trees on our way to work.
What does this say about the kind of world we’re heading towards? The disconnect between our own animal bodies and everything else that grows from the land that we live on and will return to someday grows like a widening chasm.
So many people forget that they’re a part of nature. With plastic “weed control” mats, fully concrete driveways, plastic decorative “plants” for the “aesthetic”, we’re completely sold on the propaganda of fossil fuel companies. Who wants dirt and bugs when you can have “clean” flat plastic? Long term thinking doesn’t matter. Ignore the fact that we rely on insects to pollinate our food. Who cares if our children have a home and a future.
Anyway, there are pockets of green. I see a handful of people attempting to create community spaces. It’s few and far between, and a lot of them require long drives (oh, the irony) to get there. I know our warm humid weather doesn’t help either - most of the time it’s so much easier to end up in an air-conditioned mall where I hit my step count for the day. But I imagine my daughter having grown up and only ever knowing shopping malls and I know I have to try.
