Walking the Beaten Path (NJ1)


I stroll along the immaculate sidewalks of TCU’s campus slowing from my usual brisk pace to notice the environment surrounding me.  Slowly, I hear the cicada screams return to my perception.  I walk this same beaten path daily but am deaf to that familiar noise emitted from the trees on late summer evenings.  The noise is loud.  I glance to the trees making my ears vibrate.  I think I looked in the right direction, at least.  Surrounded by buildings, I noticed the sound reverberate and echo from one wall to the next, making it challenging to distinguish from which direction the sound originated.  Still, I looked at the tree.  Barely parting before returning to their original position, leaves shivered as if preparing for the cool months ahead.
Refocusing back on my beaten path, I exited from the grid-like block of buildings encircling me.  Watching one foot after the other, my gaze slipped over to the freshly mowed grass running along both sides of my protected feet.  The edge of the sidewalk separated the place where people control from the illusory natural world.  Clearly, the men and women and people put down their concrete to ease our walks.  To match the sidewalks, of course, the men and women and people must also dominate the green grass that grows alongside it.  It is as if we understand the importance of natural plants and grasses in our environment. We need them to feel content and joyful, but we cannot help but to stamp our presence on the natural system. I think about Lakota chief Luther Standing Bear stating, “But nothing the Great Mystery placed in the land of the Indian pleased the white man, and nothing escaped his transforming hand.” While I stare at the grass, our attempt to recreate and “perfect” the natural environment, I think about class last week and our discussion of anthropocentrism and see what Luther Standing Bear emphasized. Nothing, not even the natural environment around us, is untouched by our “transforming hand.” Although I love TCU’s beautiful campus, I wonder what it might have looked like hundreds of years ago. I can only imagine which wild grasses and trees scattered the landscape. I have a feeling that, in the words of Joni Mitchel, “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Comments

  1. williams.dan76September 18, 2019 at 9:39 AM

    Great post, thanks. Reminded me a little of Thoreau, who always complained that we rarely truly see what we are seeing. I started reading environment lit long ago to catch a glimpse of the land before the parking lots went up.

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