I have thoughts about sidewalks and what they mean for the Earth and the humans who live here, molded by books I’m reading and a daily ritual on my commute. My idea in its simplest form is that concrete sidewalks are representative of the impact of industrial civilization, and keep us isolated from how the Earth wants us to experience her.
I am reading Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s fabulous Long Earth series. Its basic premise is that there are nigh-infinite copies of Earth which can be reached by humans using a simple piece of electronics. Humanity immediately begins to spread across the worlds now open to them, expanding political, religious, and cosmological concerns across a far greater landscape than we could have imagined on this one planet. In many places people immediately build concrete buildings, wooden side walks. There is a quick move to pave and master the landscape, while in other communities there is a concerted effort to flow with the land.
The story has gotten me thinking about industrial civilization as a living being which extends and alters the planet upon which we humans are the sapient makers and dreamers. Combined with life in my home city of Chicago, I am especially noticing how hard (as in firm) we have made the world in order to make our lives easier (as in more opulently profitable).
As I walk around my home city of Chicago, one of the most ubiquitous marks of “civilization” is how we alter the very ground we walk on. Like many water-bound cities, Chicago has filled in “unstable” natural swamp land to have more buildable space for nodes of industry and leisure alike in the form of protected bays, shipping piers, high-rises, and roads. Chicago changed the flow of an entire river and raised its central downtown multiple stories so that the undercity would stop flooding and the necessary modern catacombs could be laid in concrete and steel over foundations carefully held up by swamp-fill.
And upon this feat of industry, my feet hit sidewalks of concrete, steps of steel, floors of tile relieved only by the barest and hardest of carpet. Even in my apartment, I shuffle about on some plastic-y substance charading as wood flooring, firm and unmoving (but damn if it isn’t easy to clean and hard to scratch) where my couple spongey rugs are a pricey luxury for my lower-middle class income, and kept with much care. Even my shoes are no longer soft, as I had to switch to minimalist shoes to relieve some of my foot and back pain, while introducing a whole new kind of weariness slapping against the cold or hot concrete every day. No matter how well I build up the muscles and tendons in my feet, it will not change that the ground we have chosen to propagate is as unyielding as our Western societal drive toward rationality and away from the creative.
A few months ago I started an experiment where I walk on grass or dirt a little bit every day – which I have to seek out specifically in this concrete metropolis. Not barefoot or even attempting to energetically ground (Earthing or similar), just walking in my normal footwear. It has become a highlight of my routine. In the minimalist shoes, I can feel the springy-ness of the topsoil, its tiny hillocks and valleys massaging my weary soles. Even wearing my stiff winter/rain boots, the softness and adjustment to my weight is clear. It reminds me that the world we live in was originally flexible, moving as we moved, adjusting to our presence as we did to it.
The plain ground is reactive, reassuring. It cools or warms my feet just enough to be noticed opposite the air temperature. Turf will cushion the fall of a child and hold adults as we lounge in the sun.
But in order to make the ground serve as real estate, transportation, and concentrated civilization, we have lost a mundanely gentle experience of our earthen home.
As with many such issues we come back to whether industrialization and its anti-natured concrete metropolitan landscapes are the best use of human energy and ingenuity. Not a subject to be resolved in this reflection. But that living being which has changed the ground which such a significant percentage of humanity interacts with needs to be acknowledged and observed from the perspective of humanity as co-creators and imaginers of this ecological being we call Earth.
I invite you to join me in remembering that Earth intends for our footfalls to be mostly soft, footprints displaying an Earth which is reactive to our presence. Our footsteps should affect Earth as it affects us in her gentle support of our very life, and as we organize our creative efforts on her surface. Intentionally walk directly on some Earth and see what it communicates to you.