I descend the hill and reach the threshold entering into one of my favourite places. The pavement leads me past planters and then to a crosswalk. Striding across the road I leave hardscaping behind and enter the park. These former hunting grounds are lush and green. In spring and summer the heather adds in purple.
As I climb further and further up the hill I start to feel more and more relaxed. The stress of grad school, my worries about finding a job and making a way in the world, and the drama of group projects melts away. I find a spot to sit and look out over the city.
It’s beautiful and peaceful here. I feel apart from my life, my troubles, I can almost relax. I don’t go often enough but when I do go it is the best part of my day.
Edinburgh had no shortage of viewpoints, hills that offer drama and views, transcendence as Ingrid Fetell Lee puts it in Joyful. While I am terrified of heights and Ferris wheels are my personal version of hell I do get the idea of wanting to have a view, the joy of being above.
I think about Nose Hill and Crescent Heights in Calgary, places where you can take it all in, survey the world below you. Or hiking atop a ridge line.
Perhaps prospect and refuge theory and something to say about this, why these places feel so special to us.
Reading “Transcendence” I also wonder about the need we feel to escape our lives and the places we’ve built. Planetary urbanism/urbanization would argue that there is nowhere that is actually untouched, even that ridgeline in a national park. I wonder about the insistence that we are apart from nature, rather than a part of it; that nature is somewhere else that we go to recover from our lives and the awful design of the places where we live our lives. What if our everyday included more of these qualities? What if our culture was less brutal and something that we didn’t need to go forest bathing to recover from being a part of? How would our the everyday landscapes we inhabit look different if we hustled less and meandered more?
