“We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.” -Wallace Stegner, Wilderness Letter, 1960.
https://www.wilderness.org/articles/article/wallace-stegner
Serendipity is an unplanned fortunate discovery
Wikipedia
For the past few weeks I have been reflecting on the absence of so much of day to day life in this era of lockdown. I walk past the local theatre, closed. Pubs, closed. Restaurants closed. I reflect on the absence of serendipity. Our lives have no space for physical, unplanned, spontaneous discovery. And I feel that strongest in the absence of social discovery.
I am in my early middle age, with a family and quiet needs. But I have had my years of youth. Of excitement. Of chance encounters, laughter and misbehaviour in public. Now all youth is herded inside as if to shelter from a storm. Where are those faces of joy and animation? Where are those performances glorying in attention and applause?
I have been carrying around with me the kernel of a quote. My mind felt that this quote belonged to the American wilderness writer John Muir. But my search has revealed it is his fellow wilderness advocate, author Wallace Stegner.
The quote above is about wilderness. It is from a letter outlining Stegner’s view that we need wild spaces. Walking around the shuttered town I cannot help but feel a strong parallel with our urban lives. Pre pandemic I spent very little time out socialising, but it was there, enjoyed by others. The absence of people being social and carefree is a sadness. As Stegner was looking out from the edge of town, reassured that the wilderness was there, so too we need our towns and cities to be teeming with life and activity, even if we remain on the periphery. We need to maintain “our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”
Conversations With Quotations 