We left home today to head to our little cabin in the Trinity woods, which is even more rustic than our yurt (although it does have a flush toilet, albeit in a water closet 50 yards from the building!). Tonight, we are staying at our friend's little studio in Arcata, which is a cute, has-all-the-essential-features unit, walking distance from downtown. What a different reality than our rural homestead! Most people leave the city to get a break: we enjoy going urban and eating out to enjoy a change of pace.
But the urban scene challenges the locavore and the naturalist, in that the earth beneath your feet is more veiled and obscure. Whereas it has become commonplace for at least several ingredients in each of our nightly dinners to be from our very land, when we patronize restaurants, unless they focus conscientously on local food, we don't know where the lettuce, or fish, or anything else came from. And visiting buildings can be rather disorienting, when you can't remember which way north is, or if they don't take advantage of passive solar day-lighting.
Though I feel like a fish out of water at moments, for me, it is sometimes an opportunity, to re-orient and re-locate, to hold that space as I walk through the world of disconnect, to hold the space of connection to natural cycles. I hold this vision for the future, where the passage of the sun across the sky is a primary informant of design for buildings and public spaces used by humans.
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