20 October, 2022
by Talya Akpinar
Within this blog post I will refer to every central city you can think of as the city.
This past week I went on a trip to one of California’s most infamous national parks: Yosemite. Some would say a shrine to human foresight offering the persistence of life and the tranquility of the High Sierra. (National Parks Service, Yosemite National Park) Living in two huge metropolitan areas; Istanbul and Los Angeles, has kept my conscious mind foreign to nature. I grew up in a world where transportation means hailing a cab within a crowd of cars, energy means finding the nearest coffee shop to order a to-go cup, and relaxation means turning on the television to watch a movie of interest. The closest people in the city get to nature is a vase of aesthetic plants for their apartments or a bouquet of carefully assorted flowers to gift a loved one. I too, am one of those people who have grown up surrounded by skyscrapers and highways, exposed to a variation of colors and elements ranging from commercial buildings to advertisements; where absolutely nothing is calm. But not only am I a visitor in something as man-created as nature, I find reason to publicize it and depict it as a tourist attraction while also fearing the habitants of it.
You can imagine when those skyscrapers became trees, and the traffic became natural paths of greenery, I felt out of place. I would not describe the feeling as fear, but more so curiosity towards the unknown. Of Course I have seen large parks and small forests before, but nothing to this degree. This essay sets out to critique the bubble of man-made most children born in metropolitan cities grow up in, and the oblivion it creates within their conscious mind. While hiking and experiencing the many beauties that Yosemite effortlessly offers, I was able to take a step out of my accustomed lifestyle. I saw the stars for the first time since I could recall.
Perhaps the city is more wild than nature itself. Perhaps while we grow up being afraid of the unknown forests, gloomy nights of the valleys, and wild animals, the real danger is what is man-made. I say this as the man-made tricks us into a false understanding of danger. Society has categorized nature as national parks which are tourist attractions. Therefore, the visitor views the national parks as an attraction to pose in rather than an organic occurrence. By the common city locale, the wilderness is recognized as a protected environment with mapped out trails.
With that being said, a proposal for the merge of urban-industrial modernity and wilderness could perhaps unite the ecology as well as recover its polluted land. While we perceive wilderness to be far from humanity and familiarity, it is quite profoundly a human creation. If anything, what was man made, and bred, and grown, is now contaminated by the very same humans. By advertising nature as attractions and sites, we define the natural as unnatural. We create an experience out of nature and conceptualize it as sacred so that there is value in visiting. However, nature does not beg to be visited, nature does not desire to be publicized.
Selin Kesebir, et al. “How Modern Life Became Disconnected from Nature.” Greater
Good,https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_modern_life_became_disconnected_from_nature.
“Yosemite National Park (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S.
Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/yose/index.htm.
Although I grew up in San Diego (obviously not a rural area), I was fortunate to have a family extremely passionate about the outdoors. I grew up going on hikes every weekend and spending my summer vacation visiting various national parks around the states. You bring up a great pointing stating that humans have made nature feel less natural; overtime I have slowly seen national parks that I visited at a young age become more developed as I visit them over the years. The surrounding area gets more developed with businesses and gift shops and it overall takes away from the whole point of visiting these beautiful places.
After growing up in Montana and moving to California, everything you're describing was really jarring to me. I had a hard time with the general chaos of cities and not being able to see stars at night. Yosemite was beautiful when I first visited, but I was shocked by how crowded and groomed it was. To an extent, I think our attraction to nature is unavoidable. Beauty is magnetic, so we'll always want to visit it. The more humans visit it, the more we'll try to control it to some extent. I think it's incredible that humans are so attracted to beauty, but it is sad to see how much we try to tame something with a beauty linked to…
As someone who also grew up in the middle of a big city I totally relate to still being completely in awe when I go into more rural areas. Especially visting Yosemite, I have been there a few times and both the sheer size as well as the beauty is incredible to witness. To prepare for one trip, I read some of John Muir's writing about the valley. One quote in particular that still stands out to me from him is "But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its wall seems to glow with life." I agree with your final paragraph that we as humans have made nature feel less natural, but I think…
I completely relate to this juxtaposition between man and nature. I find nature to be some type of utopia, however in reality, it really is the foundation in which us humans live upon - we should know and find it within our everyday lives. Also, this passage made me think about animal crossing bridges. I find these bridges to (ironically) bridge the gap between man and nature. Such bridges should truly become more common amongst the world as it will better both humans and wildlife at large.