Sometimes it feels like the wild places are all disappearing.
They’ve been paved over, landscaped, and lawn-mowed, and a piece of our true selves has vanished along with them.
Wildernesses are now amusement parks and green spaces with potted plants and pruned bushes and trees whose roots press at the sidewalk.
I love parks but I’ll always choose wild places.
I want to be where there are no rules posted or walkways to follow, where there are no guardrails or water fountains or jungle gyms to climb on.
In the wild places, you bring what you need, find what you can, and pack out what shouldn’t be left behind. You leave only paw prints because what you don’t pack out, you dig a hole and bury.
Being in wild places feels different. It’s strange how life thrives in the savage and scary, which is why I’ll be sad when the last wild places become parks.
I’ll miss them because I’ll feel a piece of myself missing too, but I’ll visit the parks and learn to appreciate them more when it’s all we have left.
I’ll read the rules and follow the walkways and drink from the water fountains. I probably won’t climb on the jungle gym and I’ll still cringe to see roots trapped under sidewalk. And I’ll always have little baggies so we leave nothing behind.
Slowly our tracks will fade away as one day we will also disappear.
And maybe then the parks will become wild places again.
