I can understand & relate your heartbreak / anger / frustration there. Your ‘new & improved’ facilities cater to an entirely different sensibility than what went before.
I grew up ‘country’ & moved to a garden city (Victoria, Vancouver Island) in my 20’s,nrhen Toronto, before returning to the country.
Awhile back I pondered my various rentals & eventual home ownership in my lifetime of 75 years. Surprise: NONE of them were in an apartment! How lucky was I?
Sure, there were a couple of attics, one at my in-laws & another a nice Polish grandparent types in Toronto; a couple side-by-side duplexes etc., but I always had windows, trees & shrubs etc.
As a child … hop on my bike, fly down the gravel road to the lakeside, jump in till I’m blue, dry out & warm up on towel till brown & repeat until dinner time. ‘Those were the days, my friend’.
Even now, the price retired hubby & I pay for such domestic tranquility is living in a somewhat ramshackle cottage that gets buffeted (to say the least) by the elements, broken tree branches requiring roof repairs, car damage, ongoing limbing & other maintenance … with some compensatory ocean views … as realtors say “Location! Location! Location!” = tranquility.
A price we’re willing to pay for the scientifically-proven physical & mental health benefits of living in nature.
I therefore / hereby fully endorse your ‘rant’ - it IS for a good cause. 🌾🌿
we prelapsarian and antediluvian fossils [i'm 84] have witnessed the incremental decimation of the hypaethrals for decades, jay jay eh, eh? even as a canadian w/ 7 adult bantlings, i humbly and guiltily admit, there are too damnably many of us pursuing our planet's precious remaining resources and wild spaces under her welkin, but who insist upon hauling our luxuries, conveniences, and demesne's amenables w/ us. forever gone, i submit, are the days we found wild places to take our 7 bantlings and bairns to creep around searching for non-human forest inhabitants, erect our tent near a stream of clear water, bed them down w/ a serenade or storey by torchlight, awake the next morning in search of a micturation or defecation hole in the ground cover, make breakfast over a campfire comprised of dead branches and twigs, then hike throughout the day w/ no human person in sight... just the dense forests and their resident wildlife. our grand bantlings are living in an age of electronic-device addictions that are and will be inexorable for the foreseeable future. soon, even antarctica will beoverwhelmed w/ our electronic devices, war-mongering drones, and lack of compassion for any life form other than their own. it seems that every generation on its way out, as ours now is, has complained and despaired over the younger generations behind them in the evolutionary queue. admittedly, i'm no different; how about you?
“… there are too damnably many of us pursuing our planet's precious remaining resources and wild spaces.”
Agreed! At least considering the way we aren’t properly managing our resources.
Yes, within each generation there are new reasons for despair … but also hope.
I will think on the things you’ve mentioned over dinner … my husband just made a wonderfully aromatic stew & we will be watching some British mysteries. 🌿
You've definitely been lucky. Your ramshackle cottage by the ocean sounds lovely! For all its temporary hardships, I'm envious.
My dream situation would be to live in a cabin in the woods along an ocean shore. Maine, Maritimes, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, I don't care.
Even tho I don’t walk the seashore as much as when we first moved here, just glimpses of it & the sense that it’s there, satisfies me. Of course it’s heat- and cold-ameliorating influence is nice too.
Vehicles going to & fro our village now sport signs saying “We’re FULL now!”
— everyone wants a slice of paradise.
For ‘location’ we settled for a lesser dwelling, invested in a fence & got our first dog! There are always trade-offs. I hope you get what you’re dreaming of.
🌲 I read recently that even the *smell of pine needles can satisfy that need for nature within us; and the sound machines can help.
Being a reader of the scriptures & convinced of the ‘hope’ therein, anything I don’t get in the current ‘system of things’ (worldly govt) can wait for the ‘new system of things’. (thus endeth …)
I think you came out way ahead in the trade-off for the location.
Yes!! About the pine needles. A place where we camp is in the middle of a pine forest, and as soon as we step outside, pure bliss!
I believe that we're going to experience a sea change in the next few years, wherein we will indeed see a new system. I'm hopeful that many of us will be able to breathe more easily.
I’m with you— nature is essential to all well-being,
One of my favorite colleagues posed “what isn’t progress?” as her social studies essential question for the year. The ninth graders struggled to grasp her anti-conformist undertones.
We really suffer when schools don’t require a thoughtful nature curriculum for a child’s soul development. Hospital visits could be reduced dramatically by people just choosing to spend time in Natural settings… even if that means standing by the window and looking out at a bird or a tree. There are peer reviewed psychological studies about the importance of bearing witness to green scenery. I recommend the book ‘Chatter’ as a reference.
“Don’t it always seem to go —
That you don’t know
What you’ve got til it’s gone…?
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot…”
Someday— soon—- I believe the pendulum will start to make its return and Nature will be prized as the most progressive and productive aspect of our lives…after all….
A rose can and will grow from a crack in the concrete. We only need to protect and nourish the seeds of change.
I hope against hope that you're right about the pendulum, Morpho. Maybe a couple generations hence...
E. O. Wilson said we're hard-wired to crave connection with the natural world. You point out the corollary, that when we deprived ourselves of that connection, we suffer.
I can understand & relate your heartbreak / anger / frustration there. Your ‘new & improved’ facilities cater to an entirely different sensibility than what went before.
I grew up ‘country’ & moved to a garden city (Victoria, Vancouver Island) in my 20’s,nrhen Toronto, before returning to the country.
Awhile back I pondered my various rentals & eventual home ownership in my lifetime of 75 years. Surprise: NONE of them were in an apartment! How lucky was I?
Sure, there were a couple of attics, one at my in-laws & another a nice Polish grandparent types in Toronto; a couple side-by-side duplexes etc., but I always had windows, trees & shrubs etc.
As a child … hop on my bike, fly down the gravel road to the lakeside, jump in till I’m blue, dry out & warm up on towel till brown & repeat until dinner time. ‘Those were the days, my friend’.
Even now, the price retired hubby & I pay for such domestic tranquility is living in a somewhat ramshackle cottage that gets buffeted (to say the least) by the elements, broken tree branches requiring roof repairs, car damage, ongoing limbing & other maintenance … with some compensatory ocean views … as realtors say “Location! Location! Location!” = tranquility.
A price we’re willing to pay for the scientifically-proven physical & mental health benefits of living in nature.
I therefore / hereby fully endorse your ‘rant’ - it IS for a good cause. 🌾🌿
[submitted by Jeanie McEachern]
we prelapsarian and antediluvian fossils [i'm 84] have witnessed the incremental decimation of the hypaethrals for decades, jay jay eh, eh? even as a canadian w/ 7 adult bantlings, i humbly and guiltily admit, there are too damnably many of us pursuing our planet's precious remaining resources and wild spaces under her welkin, but who insist upon hauling our luxuries, conveniences, and demesne's amenables w/ us. forever gone, i submit, are the days we found wild places to take our 7 bantlings and bairns to creep around searching for non-human forest inhabitants, erect our tent near a stream of clear water, bed them down w/ a serenade or storey by torchlight, awake the next morning in search of a micturation or defecation hole in the ground cover, make breakfast over a campfire comprised of dead branches and twigs, then hike throughout the day w/ no human person in sight... just the dense forests and their resident wildlife. our grand bantlings are living in an age of electronic-device addictions that are and will be inexorable for the foreseeable future. soon, even antarctica will beoverwhelmed w/ our electronic devices, war-mongering drones, and lack of compassion for any life form other than their own. it seems that every generation on its way out, as ours now is, has complained and despaired over the younger generations behind them in the evolutionary queue. admittedly, i'm no different; how about you?
“… there are too damnably many of us pursuing our planet's precious remaining resources and wild spaces.”
Agreed! At least considering the way we aren’t properly managing our resources.
Yes, within each generation there are new reasons for despair … but also hope.
I will think on the things you’ve mentioned over dinner … my husband just made a wonderfully aromatic stew & we will be watching some British mysteries. 🌿
I think those idyllic days are just about gone, tragically. But we'll pay for their disappearance.
You've definitely been lucky. Your ramshackle cottage by the ocean sounds lovely! For all its temporary hardships, I'm envious.
My dream situation would be to live in a cabin in the woods along an ocean shore. Maine, Maritimes, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, I don't care.
Even tho I don’t walk the seashore as much as when we first moved here, just glimpses of it & the sense that it’s there, satisfies me. Of course it’s heat- and cold-ameliorating influence is nice too.
Vehicles going to & fro our village now sport signs saying “We’re FULL now!”
— everyone wants a slice of paradise.
For ‘location’ we settled for a lesser dwelling, invested in a fence & got our first dog! There are always trade-offs. I hope you get what you’re dreaming of.
🌲 I read recently that even the *smell of pine needles can satisfy that need for nature within us; and the sound machines can help.
Being a reader of the scriptures & convinced of the ‘hope’ therein, anything I don’t get in the current ‘system of things’ (worldly govt) can wait for the ‘new system of things’. (thus endeth …)
I think you came out way ahead in the trade-off for the location.
Yes!! About the pine needles. A place where we camp is in the middle of a pine forest, and as soon as we step outside, pure bliss!
I believe that we're going to experience a sea change in the next few years, wherein we will indeed see a new system. I'm hopeful that many of us will be able to breathe more easily.
Oh, what a shame and I guess there are nature lovers and nature visitors.
"Nature poseurs"?
Indeed! Like the leaf colours but on the ground.
I’m with you— nature is essential to all well-being,
One of my favorite colleagues posed “what isn’t progress?” as her social studies essential question for the year. The ninth graders struggled to grasp her anti-conformist undertones.
We really suffer when schools don’t require a thoughtful nature curriculum for a child’s soul development. Hospital visits could be reduced dramatically by people just choosing to spend time in Natural settings… even if that means standing by the window and looking out at a bird or a tree. There are peer reviewed psychological studies about the importance of bearing witness to green scenery. I recommend the book ‘Chatter’ as a reference.
“Don’t it always seem to go —
That you don’t know
What you’ve got til it’s gone…?
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot…”
Someday— soon—- I believe the pendulum will start to make its return and Nature will be prized as the most progressive and productive aspect of our lives…after all….
A rose can and will grow from a crack in the concrete. We only need to protect and nourish the seeds of change.
I hope against hope that you're right about the pendulum, Morpho. Maybe a couple generations hence...
E. O. Wilson said we're hard-wired to crave connection with the natural world. You point out the corollary, that when we deprived ourselves of that connection, we suffer.
And I love your point about the rose!