Concrete Confines

(photo credit: morguefile dot com)

Last week for my literature and the environment class we had to read Thoreau's Walking. To be brutally honest, I didn't read the entire thing because I lost interest after the sixth page.  I did however gain a new look to the natural world from those six pages I did read.

In general, Thoreau is writing that people are chained to their workplace and their homes when instead they should be outside witnessing and experiencing nature.  The problem with this today is that so much of what we do relies on technology.  Don't get me wrong, I love technology and how it has revolutionized our world, but if you stop and think about it, it makes some sense.

Instead of kids going outside and playing after school they end up sitting in front of the television either watching a show that promotes bad habits or playing video games.  If it's not in front of the television it's in front of the computer.  It's not just limited to the kids either, adults are the same way.  Come home from work and what's the first things you think about? Personally, as a college student and a person who has grown up mostly in the outdoors, I come home and go straight to the social networking on my laptop.

I went for a walk yesterday in one of my favorite parks in the area.  It's really lovely because there are wide walking paths that wrap around the entire park so you can see everything that's going on.  The path even breaks up at different parts to form a two mile, mile and quarter mile paths.  What I realized yesterday while taking this walk was that in order for me to get motivated to go on a walk I had gotten in my car and driven fifteen minutes to a place that has thousands of dollars worth of concrete when I had the countryside in my backyard to take advantage on such a wonderful January day.

It got me thinking back to Thoreau's writing.  Our norm is concrete.  Everywhere around us there is some form of concrete structure standing. From roads, sidewalks to buildings, there's a lot more concrete than you first think once you start looking.  We've become a society that continues to keep building, and in some cases we keep building when there is no need to do so.  We're caging ourselves into this concrete jungle where the natural world is slowly being closed off every day.

The photo for this week's GBE prompt made me think of my walk and the realizations I had about our concrete confines.  I wish I lived in a place like the photo, where there is minimal interference by humans in a world where nature takes it's course.

- Jessie