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I mean, how freqently do you see a land mammal that isn't a cat or a dog.?
Apparently the SF Bay Area is extremely woodsey for a major metro...
Growing up near a creek running through sprawling suburbia, I'm used to urban mammals including not just mice, moles, gophers, rats, and squirrels, but also rabbits, possums, raccoons, skunks, and the occasional deer. I don't have to travel more than 5 miles to significantly increase the frequency of deer, and maybe 20 miles to catch the occasional coyote, mountain lion, or bobcat.
Yes, birds of all kinds all over the place - songbirds, raptors, seabirds, corvids and other scavengers, the occasional owl, and, of course, pigeons. I didn't used to pay so much attention to them, but Freya got me noticing the Hawks and Falcons, and Odin got me noticing the Ravens and Crows. Environmental Science field trips got me noticing the Gulls and Turns, and trying to figure out what the hell was making that funny noise got me noticing the difference between angry squirrels and happy redwing blackbirds.
I've always noticed all the cats, the bluebelly lizards, and, on a less positive note, the spiders *twitch* (I know, it's a personal prejudice - you don't have to agree with me, but I still don't care for 'em). I find it's the trees that still fascinate me the most - especially Redwoods.
I know that a lot of what draws me to nature is just the fact that most of it is alive. A lot of plants and some animals have a kind of glow to them. I don't mean vibe, I mean they reflect light well into the UV spectrum, and it makes them sparkly. Of course there's also the vibe.
Another thing that really draws me is just the reduction of background noise. Despite being hypersensitive, I mostly don't notice how much I go through daily life in an urban environment clenched up in self-defense against the bombardment of noise generated by all those cars and air conditioners and such, reflected sharply off man-made walls.
The forest is comparatively quiet. Water running through the creek, chirping birds, even the yowling of mating animals is more melodic than the sound of a nearby freeway, and the sound isn't concentrated and feedback-looped by ... well, much of anything really.
I'm okay in suburban environments, but I can barely handle major urban areas like San Francisco and downtown Oakland - something about being surrounded by buildings taller than trees just feels deeply wrong to me.
I suppose it registers on a spiritual level - I don't necessarily think Emotional and "mundane" sensory responses are less sacred than more esoteric alternatives.
it isn't like I could survive at night out in truely wild environment.
That's not nearly as hard as you might think - Humans aren't anybody's natural prey, really (well, mosquitos, I guess), so your primary concern overnight is temperature. Staying warm is mostly a matter of insulation and shelter, both of which can be pretty straightforward to acquire in a truely wild context.
The real challenge is surviving without any equipment in a managed area - if you're in a park or something where you're not allowed to actually use the resources around you AND you don't have any of your own, that can be a problem.
Of course, in the long run the challenge is finding enough food, and that's a whole other issue. Again, managed areas are artificially difficult in this manner, because it may be against the rules to fish or hunt in certain ways. In a truely wild context, whatever you can make work is fair game.
--Ember-- |
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