The importance of green spaces
Leaving our green and ancient mountains yesterday, heading to a
place with a culture much older than ours (Ireland), which is even
greener, has me thinking about our relationship with place.
A friend in an online circle had recently posted about how she'd decided to move back to the mountains, after almost a year of being at the the beach; it had taken that time for the understanding to unfold that she'd realized that she'd moved from the place where she felt best and at home.
Her reflections touched me- there are many places that I don't feel "at home" from natural to human created, but coming "home" to the mountains of Western North Carolina, with its green and worn slopes, has always felt good. Mountains, rivers, streams, and green forests mean home to me.
I was thinking as I traveled, that the experience of being in airports and on planes, creates a weird and disorienting sense of disconnection with the natural world.
The loudness of the traveling hub-bub, 3 flights in a long journey, traveling all day, and overnight to Ireland had me a bit discombobulated and feeling quite unlike myself, but travel on planes always does that. Trying to "escape" via reading, noise-canceling headphones, etc. just reinforces the oddness of how these big machines take us so far, in non-human time frames, so quickly.
I've traveled to many different places, but I've found that the necessary air travel is just something to endure, on the one hand, while being grateful for the ability to do so, to experience the wonder of exploring new and different places.
I'm thankful that arriving, and being back in fresh air and, at least, semi-natural surroundings, can help me re-balance and "re-root" to where I really like to be, surrounded by (at least) some semblance of the natural world.
A friend in an online circle had recently posted about how she'd decided to move back to the mountains, after almost a year of being at the the beach; it had taken that time for the understanding to unfold that she'd realized that she'd moved from the place where she felt best and at home.
Her reflections touched me- there are many places that I don't feel "at home" from natural to human created, but coming "home" to the mountains of Western North Carolina, with its green and worn slopes, has always felt good. Mountains, rivers, streams, and green forests mean home to me.
I was thinking as I traveled, that the experience of being in airports and on planes, creates a weird and disorienting sense of disconnection with the natural world.
The loudness of the traveling hub-bub, 3 flights in a long journey, traveling all day, and overnight to Ireland had me a bit discombobulated and feeling quite unlike myself, but travel on planes always does that. Trying to "escape" via reading, noise-canceling headphones, etc. just reinforces the oddness of how these big machines take us so far, in non-human time frames, so quickly.
I've traveled to many different places, but I've found that the necessary air travel is just something to endure, on the one hand, while being grateful for the ability to do so, to experience the wonder of exploring new and different places.
I'm thankful that arriving, and being back in fresh air and, at least, semi-natural surroundings, can help me re-balance and "re-root" to where I really like to be, surrounded by (at least) some semblance of the natural world.
I think that plane travel is also bad for our physical selves .Our bodies weren't designed to be hurled through space and transported thousands of miles away!
ReplyDeleteHere's to being healed by nature upon your arrival!