Growing up in the middle of LosAngeles I didn’t have any form of nature in my immediate surroundings to appreciate. I knew such places existed, but they were far. Very far… I knew about nature. I had seen it in books, and movies. But there wasn’t any of it around unless I traveled a few miles to the nearest overcrowded beach, which didn’t satisfy the longing to be in a place of nature. There were nearby parks, and favorite trees that I liked to climb. I knew all of the local building managers as a result, because they would always yell at me for climbing their trees. As fun as these places were, they didn’t satisfy my thirst for nature either.
Given our growing population, I imagine that your experience is going to become rare. And mine more common. We live in a nation where voting is how we make decisions. Given how huge our world population is becoming, and how many people will grow up as I have, with no contact with nature. How are we going to cast our vote concerning such issues? I grew up in a world with company slogans and products tell us that bugs and wildlife are bad. We’ve been groomed since children that nature is a place where people don’t live. And things like dirt and bugs do not belong with us unless they’ve been domesticated.
It wasn’t until I was a teen when I took a trip to another state did I see how dark the natural unlit night could be. There were just miles and miles of absolutely nothing. I liked it. But that’s unique to me, I liked nature regardless of where I grew up. But is that true for everyone? We don’t see nature, we don’t gain an appreciation of it, we don’t grow a connection with it and don’t know the situation that there is less and less of it year by year as we grow our city lines further into the vast empty wilderness.
Where I’m living currently is an upper class neighborhood. Each street ends in a cul-de-sac surrounded by nature. There are carved in trails and washes through the nature that surrounds the area. I’m living right next door to desert wildlife. I walked outside to take a break between classes, and a humming bird flew within inches of me as if it were normal. But this type of environment is a luxury and reserved for the wealthy.
If there’s going to be any solution to living in harmony with nature, there needs to be new established rules regarding city development where everyone can live in such an environment. Or even development with current cities to move nature back in. I don’t imagine there is going to be a great deal of support. If there were a general vote asking if people preferred living near nature or in the city, I’d imagine the statistics to show that the people who grew up outside of nature would continue to want to live away from it. And over time those statistics will continue to rise as more and more people grow up without having had such a connection.
I just hope the conversation turns into solutions. Not for the sake of future generations. But because I’d like to live in such a place too.
