It rarely matters when you are.... most eras in the history of civilization are marked by toil and recovery, construction-destruction, and suffering. I see it here, in my own city of Glasgow, people misunderstanding the nature of living. Indeed, like the Welsh mining town in the 1941 film How Green Was My Valley, there is a lot of ill-health even in today's so-called progressive economy. We may have done away with the coal pits and the chimney sweeps but we have replaced them with call centres and deliveroo. This is the nature of man - deception: deceiving himself, deceiving others. Call centres, in their boxing in and aggressive selling, are simply modern day collieries. And the people who work in them, modern day miners.
And yet, the city of Glasgow is not its call centres, nor its shopping malls. People may make Glasgow as the slogan goes (more selling), but the hills made the people, and without the rivers and streams, there would be no Glas chu (Glasgow's original name, from the Gaelic meaning grey-green hollow). And yet, how many of Glasgow's youth know of its peripheral hills, know of the 'valley aspect', know of its sources and springs? Not many, from what I can gather in my pastoral excursions. I rarely encounter another person when I'm out and about, nevermind young people. It would appear that people are simply unaware of the health benefits of hills and wide open spaces, of the natural setting that can lead to one's awakening from the city's slumber, of hill-walking, or strath-cycling. Most, and this reveals the hamster-like nature of what man has been fashioned into, prefer a treadmill in a noisy enclosed gym. But man is more than just his body. One might say that the human's body is indefinable, since it is an open-flowing system that is intimately entwined with the elements and the earth at large.
Walking the hills or cycling the strath is a case then of getting to know yourself, getting to know again the 'body' that you were estranged from soon after birth, when the brainwashing and the conditioning began. In terms of its periphery of semi-wild spaces - the Campsie Fells, the Kilpatrick Hills, the Renfrewshire Moors and the lumps and bumps of Inverclyde - I have lived and breathed in no finer city (with perhaps the exception of Warsaw in Poland whose lack of hills is more than made up for by its forests). And I have been about - living in around 15 cities worldwide over the past two decades since the age of 25.
Indeed, a city that does not have a halo of hills (or forest) surrounding it (that can sanitize and canonize), or green fingers that penetrate and ventilate (allowing ease of access/escape), is not a city but a symptom of the great existential-ecological disease that the modern day coagulated city seems predicated upon. I mean, look at cities like London or Paris or New York for instance - they're so big and noisy that to grow up in them is to positively welcome mental and bodily illness. And that's to say nothing of the Chinese cities like Xian, or Beijing, whose pollution levels are simply a crime against humanity and all of Nature.
When I lived in Warsaw (for 3 years) I was immediately aware of her green 'fingers' which were virtual corridors of green-ness coming from the exurban countryside that almost penetrated the city's centre. I was also aware that in spite of Warsaw's fairly strict policy of maintaining these green corridors there was always the possibility of corruption: spaces being developed when they should be left alone. Indeed, it's a constant battle against the developers who see the city (as most are apt to do) as a big dollar sign waiting to be cashed in. One's 'body' is being contantly violated by the rapaciousness of developers and short-sighted, small-minded, capitalists.
Glasgow is fortunate in that it has seen a great number of its citizens give back to the city in terms of green-ness. Maxwell, Burrell, Elder et al. have all donated large spaces to be left alone. Imagine if didn't have people who saw the existential benefits from the leaving alone of nature?
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