Geography and one’s landscape informs and imbues every aspect of our daily lives. Unless one travels extensively and has finely tuned sensibilities , it’s common to take one’s surroundings for granted: the routine, the minutiae, and the exigencies of everyday life corral and consume our awareness and focus of the physical world around us.
Typically it’s the artists and the literary world that calls our attention to and reminds us of the beauty and/or physical attributes of our surroundings. Writers such as Thoreau and Turgenev and painters like the Impressionists, the Romantics and the Barbizon School come to mind in this regard as chroniclers and illuminators of landscape and the physical world at different moments in time and place.
Seminal moments in time and place such as war and natural disaster jolt us from our complacency and remind us of the fragility and vulnerability of the physical world; natural phenomena force us to re-evaluate, reassess, and to appreciate afresh what we have and what we depend upon in our everyday lives. Think of John Denver and his call to the Rockies and the high expansive climbs of Colorado in the wake of the Vietnam Wars. Celestial Seasonings Tea Company was based on the natural herbs harvested in the mountains and was marketed as a natural elixir, yet another call to return to the proverbial garden of original purity and innocence.
A good example of what I’m talking about here stems from a friend’s recent trip to Colorado and the Pacific Northwest and what she had to say about her travels. She talked about the vastness of the West and how tiny and inconsequential it made her feel; she contrasted these feelings with the sense of intimacy and coziness she felt when flying over the Hudson River Valley on her approach to Bradley Field. The lushness of the landscape was in stark contrast to what she experienced out west. Driving up I-91 and exiting in Franklin County impressed her as “quaint,” “close,” and “friendly.” Of course, she was returning home and to the familiar, but she insisted it was more than that as she had made this trip many times in the past and always felt the same
I offer this rambling as food for thought as we enjoy summer here in New England and celebrate the lush fields, pastures, and woodlands all around us. I’m especially mindful, and appreciative, of all the delicious fruits and vegetables we are in the midst of harvesting and consuming. God bless our fertile soil and our industrious, hardworking farmers!
Brad Brigham lives in Colrain.