REFER TO GREY: Contemplations by Robert Greigos © 2007-2024

I haven’t lived in a big city for quite a while, now. But, when I did, I walked a lot. I also rode on buses and the L-train or subway. As a pedestrian or as a passenger on public transportation, one rubs shoulders, so to speak, with one’s fellow citizens. You get a chance to look into their eyes, observe their behaviors, assess their moods, and deduce a bit of how their lives are progressing. If one is in the least empathetic, one cannot help but feel connected and a part of something, something bigger than one’s self, part of a kind of seething churning organism making sure that every member citizen is fed, clothed, housed, enabled, and entertained to at least some measure of belonging.

Currently, I live in a more rural setting. I see, but don’t have the same kind of connection to my fellows as I did within a big city. Out here, I have more of a connection to the land, to the flora and fauna, to the light, to the water, and to the sky. Out here, my empathy is growing every day for the earth and for the environment in which I find myself. And, my sense of people out here has been transformed. Within the big city, I felt people connected to each other, and to me. Out here, I sense how people are connected to the land, how they have engaged with it, transformed it, milked it, nestled into it, and have sometimes been defeated by it.

I don’t conclude that one kind of relationship with one’s fellows is better than the other. There is certainly fulfillment to be had within each. But, as a species, we live in a finite world, for the time being at least. And, I don’t think it would do any of us any harm to spend a bit more time walking amongst our fellow citizens or down a country road or two on a more regular basis than we currently do. We are in this together. And, we are all dependent upon the land in more ways than most of us realize. It wouldn’t hurt to retune our sense of connection along those lines, both with our fellow citizens and with nature and the environment. The future, if as a species we are to have a future, may depend upon it.

Enjoy your walk. If you open your mind to it, it won’t ever be boring.