Shifting through the embers is absolutely
haunting. It is I guess a metaphor for our wanton destruction of nature and the
ultimate cost of this is not the gold but all that was lost.
I am hesitant to buy into Gary
Snyder’s argument so quickly. His idea of what rethinking our geo-political
boundaries sounds nice but I don’t know if this alone would be so firm as to
reaffirm a sense of community in specific areas. Especially in urban areas
where this “connection” to the land is so heavily obscured by what are
literally sepreating people from the land underneath them. I feel like what he
is saying is that small rural to suburban communities need to come together to “protect”,
really to defend against non-locals, areas that sustain them. This is true, but
I don’t know if a redefinition, even a paradigmal one is entirely necessary on
a geologic scale. Rather I think the separation is purely on a social scale,
the trajectory of interactions is increasing in the meta-physical realm and
this hurts the physical connection people have with one another, and
subsequently the physical connection people have to place.
I’ve indirectly connected physical interactions
with people to a connection to a physical place. Taking a step back I’d like to
flesh this out further. Is it the social interactions we have in a physical
place that contribute to a connection to the place itself? Or can a strong connection
to a physical space be attained solely on the basis of non-social interactions?
I have had plenty a sojourn into the woods by myself and contemplated the
beauty of the natural aesthetic, thought it quite nice to see the trees and
birds and insects. But can one truly be connected to a place that one spends
their time completely alone within? Of all the places that hold the most
importance it is of those I’ve spent time with people in that are crucial, that
come before the places I’ve only gone into by myself. I don’t think that a
place alone with you is enough, maybe for Thoreau; he found enough merit to
write so eloquently for the places he’d stay by himself. But even then I’ve
read that Thoreau insisted on frequent visits from his friends during his stay
at Walden, and along each of his journeys it includes descriptions of
interactions he has had along the way. I think maybe it would appear at first
to not be important, or even that the places we engage with alone would come
out on top. Maybe the places where we can have the most opportunities to
reflect and appreciate the subtly of nature and land are the places that rank
the highest on our lists of that which twist our sinews. Or maybe it is the
time spent with other people in these places that capture the importance of the
place itself, a respect for the space which provides the setting and atmosphere
for our complex and rewarding and awful human social interactions to happen
within. It even provides a temporal net to capture these fading collisions of
dynamic egos and growing pains, so that one day in deep nostalgia you can recede
to this places (physically or meta-physically) and relive that which has
transpired.
Maybe
in the ashes of those burnt books of lore are where all of these stories have
gotten lost to.
