WALK the City
I have a favorite conversation with a friend in the city. It happens cyclically, seasonally, almost always after she’s survived a stint in bleating gridlocked traffic or a long spell of grey weather against grey buildings.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” she says, exasperated. “It’s too much. Too loud. Too busy.”
I understand. Manhattan is busy. And it is loud. And inspiring. There is a reason why I’ve chosen owls and clear sky as my intimate neighbors, why I only pop into Gotham every now and again.
In the summer, my friend will spend half a Wednesday waxing poetic about Friday’s trip to Montauk. In the fall, she meets every late train with a threat to move upstate, find more space, to be in nature. Winter comes, and it’s the salt on the sidewalk that gets her, either in its scarcity or abundance. Normally, everything is fine in spring. Until all the visitors arrive.
I’ve grown fond of our chats, mostly listening, but reliably, I close our conversation with the same question: “When was the last time you took a walk?”
She thinks for a moment, and I do, too, thinking of what I could ask next.
Do you see the way the earth pushes its way through the slab of sidewalk to make way for the clover?
Can you hear the emerald-necked pigeons squabbling over pieces of hot dog and bagel?
Do you watch them walking along Broadway and wonder how they know the right of way?
Have you noticed how many tomato plants live in Brooklyn? So diligently tended to on their rooftops and fire escapes.
Have you let the rain slide down an awning and hit you on the cheeks lately? It’s the very same rain they have in Montauk.
Follow a winged maple seed pod as it floats through the cut flowers on 28th Street. Catch it like a butterfly.
Go to the park where the birders and barefoot kids play. Nature is alive in your city.
The very existence of urban parks tells us everything we need to know about humans and nature! We can Uber our coffee and ride in a silver rocket underground, but we know better than to try and live without ducks in a pond.
I remind my dear friend as she longs for their cool sips of air and unobstructed skyline, as she pines, “All I want is my own garden and grass,” that being in nature is less about where you are in the world and more about how you choose to look at it. As the great children’s author and playwright Frances Hodgson Burnett says, "If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden."
We are always in nature, if we pay attention. Sometimes, I feel closest to Mother Earth at Muir Woods. Other times, in Tribeca.
Inevitably, the late train comes, the clouds part, and the yearning subsides, rekindling the romance of New York (or Chicago or Boulder or Toronto). A week later, my friend has Mets tickets and is remarking on the sunshine. She’s unbothered by the smells and crowds and car horns. It’s her city again. When she forgets this, which I know she will, all she needs to do is walk home.
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.