A Short Tirade Against the City

As you may well know I’ve had a difficult time adjusting to life in the Pacific Northwest, but I’ve taken to biking and running alone in whatever scraps of nature I can find and I’ve come to believe in the last few days that it’s not so much Pennsylvania I miss as the outdoors in general. Since my arrival here I have been suffering from severe nature deficit disorder. Scout and I have gone out to the woods on only a handful of occasions whereas I used to go hiking, harvesting, exploring, or be working on some primitive project, in the winter, let’s say once a week, and nearly every day in the spring and summer. There wasn’t really anything else to do. But it’s not Urban Scout’s fault, I haven’t even desired to work on primitive skills or learn about nature since I got here. The city seems to take that desire and suffocate it, overwhelming you with other stimuli, making it impossible to concentrate. On the other end of the spectrum, times back east when I went camping in the woods for days or weeks on end I found the desire to learn skills and pay attention to nature infinitely easier than even in my country home. It was impossible not to know the phase of the moon, or the direction the wind was blowing, or wonder what kind of frog makes that noise. I’ve come to believe that if you have to make yourself pay attention to these things, making a concentrated effort to go outside and record them in your little journal, there’s something very wrong with the way you are living.

As I said in comments on my last blog, I understand why people raised in the city would not feel the soul-crushing horror that I do living in the city, how it’s “good” for them in the same way my sugary comfort food is “good” for me, but in the end I simply find it incongruous with the values of rewilding. Yes, it is possible to connect with nature on a deep level while living in the city, but it isn’t easy. You’re working against the grain as well as exposing yourself to (more) toxic air, water, noise pollution, light pollution, electromagnetic fields, and crime. Cities, as the epitome of civilization, are irredeemable in my eyes, and like the Ring of Power they corrupt all those who come near. (Note: I’m not really a nerd. I’ve only even seen one of the LOTR movies.)

In these primitive circles I often hear community being valued over nature because “people are social animals”. Those who wish to run away from it all and move to the wilderness are ostracized and ridiculed as not getting what rewilding is all about. I can’t disagree with this viewpoint enough. For one, the person who runs away to live in the woods, generally does not want to be alone at all, but is forced to be alone because the abusive and hypnotic nature of the city has his friends and family ensnared in its ugly tentacles. Secondly, it’s a limited point of view that includes only humans in the definition of community. Nothing underscores my point more clearly than what happened yesterday. We went to harvest wapato, an important and much talked about native food for the region. Many of my friends in Portland have been espousing these anti-civilizational values for the last10 years, yet we went to a location based not on firsthand experience of harvesting wapato before or seeing wapato growing there but by following someone else’s directions. Needless to say we barely found any wapato. I find this sort of incident completely unforgiveable. You can’t rewild philosophically without a sound knowledge of place and you can’t rewild physically without a community. So city people shut up, get outside, and walk your talk, and country people stop whining about how lonely you are and start reaching out to whoever (person, plant, or animal) you can find. We need both.