When you move from the city into the country, a considerable number of municipally peripheral things suddenly come into your life in a big way, such as the moon and the stars. Also insects, trees and animals, not to mention the sky as a whole. Also, general vegetation, and a welcome absence of the masses of concrete and asphalt and people that characterize city life, as do power and phone lines overhead.
The moon doesn't play much of a role in city life, except as a kind of urban add-on one sees occasionally that is played up in movies as an extravaganza backdrop, the moon coming up between the skyscrapers. City folks actually don't have all that much to do with the moon, let alone the stars, except in a mythico-cinematico-derivativo kind of way. Isn't it mystical, they say in the park, that smattering of artificial countryside city folks resort to in their free time to evoke their roots with a distant wistfulness, like they do in a museum where they can touch the artifacts. And the sky — in the city the sky is pretty much an artifact too, the less significant part of what metropolitans call the "skyline." Isn't it impressive, they say. Well, yeah, I guess so, if you like artifacts in your eye.
Out in the country the sky stretches all the way from here to there (not the city "here and there"; such words resume their original meaning out in the country). And of course the country is where birds actually live and enjoy themselves. By birds I don't mean panhandling pigeons, but self-supporting warblers, wheatears, grosbeaks, ducks, thrushes, egrets, pheasants, finches, redstarts, hawks, swallows, wagtails, owls, the list goes on. Real birds. Not merely the species or two that can tolerate exhaust fumes for a discernible life span, like the trees the city plants along the avenues. And insects — not cockroaches, which can live anywhere, the pigeons of the insect family — but genuine broad-spectrum insects, buzz and hum and crawl, all going about their ancient business in their traditional ways in holes and hills and hives or just plain on the ground (there's actual ground out in the country) to the chirpings and trillings of cricket and katydid as evening comes, and through the night, the fragrant night. And then at dawn vast webs are strung with beads of dew and hung with warbler notes in the pink sunrise from way down at the bottom of the sky.
Article comments
1 - Sister Ray
There are trade-offs. Cities have employment, cultural and educational opportunites (and even "real birds"). I like living someplace with libraries that are open on Sunday, museums, cinemas, music and film festivals, religious diversity, etc. That was my choice. Doesn't mean I hate sunsets.
Plus, if everybody moved to the country it would turn into cookie-cutter suburbia any wouldn't be country anymore.
2 - Nancy
Yah - that's what's happened in my neck of the woods: the entire area for hundreds of miles around DC is turning into one gigantic bedroom community of McMansions, punctuated by strip malls, business 'parks', and the occasional 10 sq. acres of parkland that exists only because it's been designated as a historical site. And as it is, the damned developers probably tried to pave it over to make a car dealership.
3 - Bennett
Beautiful piece Robert. I too live "way out" in the country. I don't encorage folks to move away from the cities, it isn't for everyone. But if you dreamed of chickens and cows and lush gardens as a child, don't wait!
The joys of watching your very own forest grow tall over ten or twenty years, as you thin out the overcrowded second growth to transform your proprty into a private Golden Gate Park...
Hard to beat! Thanks for this post!
4 - Terry Walsh.
I live in a town in the North of England but need a regular fix of country. I only need to drive about 25 miles to be in stunning countryside and I head for the hills every week searching out little used country roads and shady lanes, just me and my camera, magic.