Proximate Civilization.
I’ve got it. Having spent a corpus of days in a large-ish town, I get the absurd convenience of it all. No advance menu planning. Go to a show whenever one wants. Pop out for a cuppa and be back before the dog needs to pee. No great commute for groceries. Or the dentist. Or even to fill the gas tank. Again.
The list goes on. Someone else, several someones even, clear snow from the roads. Heat appears magically at the touch of a button. Firewood is merely a romantic luxury, not a daily haul from the shed. No more schlepping down an icy path in one’s slippers to pull-start the generator so the lights work. Chat with other human beings at any time of the day or night.
What I missed didn’t dawn on me at first. The convenience dawned on me. Or rather hit me upside the head with a sickening smack. Everything is easy. Days slipped by. Days then filled with activities heretofore unavailable to and mostly forgotten by my mountain-dwelling self. Fun things. People things. Civilized things. Weeks turned corners and more things grew into the schedule. No day just staying at home. No day where I didn’t get out at least a wee bit.
The morning run hasn’t changed. Well, the timing hasn’t changed. In the mountains it is a trance of trees. In farmland, an embrace of space. In town, I am transfixed by endless yards and houses. I weave stories about the people inside them betwixt my steps. I don’t watch my Dane gallop through the trees with a half-smile on my face, she’s tethered to my left hand where she cannot forcibly greet the dogs barking in hidden back yards. The more city runs I take, the more stories pile up in the corners of my brain.
After enough stories, my mind rebels. Forces me to quiet the incessant inner voice. Then. Oh, then. I see the dawn. I see that I have exchanged stillness for convenience and camaraderie and civilization. The trees and trees and trees and mountains and daily chores have lost their hold on the center of my being. They hold no sway here in the city’s energetic movement.
Some feel nurtured and supported by the proximity of civilization. I suppose, to be honest, most. Otherwise, all these city folk would be out in the woods or farms. I get it. But the trade-off is costly. Some days I see only what the myriad of city wonders obscure. The closeness of it all. Yards with landscaping and yards without. Paved roads. Sky crisscrossed with wires and smoke. Lovely, manicured parks. And people. Not just one or two. But heaps of them. Nice ones. Grumpy ones. Dog walking ones. Ones I would probably like if I met them properly. Ones I might avoid if I knew enough. Lots.
I didn’t notice at first, but now I know. My stillness is gone. I have re-joined the frenetic pace of my fellow civilized neighbors. Absurd convenience clears the way for absurd activity. I suppose that may just be why stillness is found in more uninhabited places.
I have gained much by proximate civilization. But now I know what I am missing. And what I need to seek once again. Stillness.
