In a past life, Rebecca and I made a living doing interior painting, and last week some previous favorite customers asked us to come into the Twin Cities to paint their home. So we packed up our bags and headed in.
                                                                                No lines or borders from this perspective-- imagine such a view!
The city is always a frightening place for me. I’m never quite comfortable unless I can see a grove of trees nearby where I could escape to. As we maneuvered through the traffic and drove deeper into the city’s heart, I started to hyperventilate.  I didn’t think I’d make it through the week.

“It’s okay,” Rebecca said. “Look at the crows.”

So I watched the crows. All week long I watched the crows. And I was amazed to discover a whole bunch of other familiar friends. Among them were the sparrows and chickadees and cardinals and squirrels and rabbits.

“What do you think the city looks like to these animals?” Rebecca asked. We were driving across an overpass,  watching three crows fly out over the roof-tops. For a moment, I thought I could see through their eyes. Roof and fences were perching-places, grocery-store parking lots were sources of dropped food, and the trees – more numerous than I thought – were places to socialize or hide.

When I snapped back to human vision, I realized that the reason the city feels so claustrophobic to me is because I draw imaginary lines everywhere I look. Fences aren’t perching-places, but boundaries. Around every house and building there are lines, many of which can’t be crossed for fear of trespassing. In the city, we are only allowed to travel in certain corridors – along a public street, for instance. If we chose a random direction and started walking, we’d soon be stepping through someone’s back yard.

      Flying free.
Around our home at Sweetwater, it’s different. There are still imaginary lines of property, but because we know the neighbors, Rebecca and I can begin walking in almost any direction we choose, and keep walking for a very long time. It’s difficult to feel claustrophobic when you have so much roaming-ground.

When we returned to Sweetwater, the crows greeted us home. They seemed little different from their counterparts in the city. Both city crow and country crow ignored imaginary lines, and flew wherever they chose. It made Rebecca and I wonder how much of humans’ mental tension is a result of these imaginary lines we draw around our activities. That’s one of our favorite things about going out into nature – for the most part, those lines disappear. You can roam freely, and the constrictions of time and responsibility evaporate. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of sitting up in a tree for a few hours and watching the birds come and go, or lying on your back on a summer day and seeing the clouds pass by overhead. For us, it’s good to remember that we are called Human Beings – not Human Doings. Sometimes ‘being’ is the most wonderful thing we can be ‘doing’ with our time.

As for me, I’m just happy that Rebecca reminded me to watch the city crows-- they certainly were good teachers.
 

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