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Urbanites sadly oblivious to beauty of rural life
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DEAR Wan Lixin,
Your story about how bored your son was when you took him to a village in north Jiangsu Province (“Material conditions not the only thing that separate urbanites from their rural cousins,” February 17) reminded me of an encounter I had with a young man in rural Bellevue, Iowa (population: 2,500).
I came upon him on a pleasant spring day as he was working with a small crew clearing some brush from a neighbor’s property.
We exchanged brief pleasantries and I listened with pleasure to him recount how wonderful it was to be back in his hometown (he had recently begun a job in Chicago, about 180 miles east of Bellevue).
He told me how, beginning in his childhood, he had walked with his father who regaled him with facts about the wildlife, plants, and former inhabitants of his town (including the Native Americans).
He remembered fondly “camping out” with his father under the stars and marveling at the ocean of stars flowing overhead as he lay on the ground listening to the hooting of owls and the rustling of night creatures in the brush.
I told him that I loved the natural wonderland surrounding Bellevue, too — even though I had been in “urban” Des Moines for the past 30 years — probably because I was born and raised in the river town of Davenport (about 70 miles downriver from Bellevue).
When I was young
When I was young, Davenport had a population of roughly 70,000 people, but its residential areas were quiet places filled with mature trees and grassy lawns.
As a boy, I often either climbed the white birch tree that rose near our porch to sit in its lower limbs just to listen to the night sounds and gaze at the stars or, equally delicious, would sprawl upon the soft grass and stare up at the glittering heavens (in those days, before today’s brilliant street lamps, the night sky was still unblemished by light pollution).
On more than one occasion I had the disorienting feeling that I was falling upwards into the stars, so beckoning and near did they seem.
As our conversation wound down, the young man mentioned that just a couple of summers before he had invited a friend he had made in Chicago to come and visit him in Bellevue.
Unfortunately, that friend, born and raised in Chicago, was severely disoriented in this small part of rural Iowa: everything was both too big — a broad sky unmarred by tall buildings and rolling fields stretching to the horizon — and too quiet — he had trouble sleeping at night because there was no background sound of rumbling traffic!
Furthermore, he was bored silly when his Bellevue friend took him hiking along the river or up to the bluff overlooking the town! I suspect he was very much like your son: he had been accustomed to a very different environment and literally could not see the beauty or goodness available in this alien, quiet and open environment.
No longer sensing — or knowing — how our lives are, indeed, intricately intertwined with those of other creatures, forgetting how our species for hundreds of thousands of years lived in grasslands, roamed prairies, and were surrounded by the seasons, sounds and sights of nature, we have become seriously spiritually deprived.
Do you think it is possible that we can find a way to “rejuvenate rural society,” thereby revitalizing our larger civilizations as well?
I confess to being more than a little pessimistic in this regard.
Greg Cusack Portland, Oregon
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