Abstract: existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence: abstract concepts such as love or beauty.

• dealing with ideas rather than with events….

That’s a quick three fingered definition provided by my computer.

Like it or not, that’s who we are becoming. The essential relationships in our lives, relationships with living nature and their rhythms, dribble away the more we are drawn into the city. It’s a thousand year process, and we’re nine hundred years into it! What was once culture, rooted in the soil and bound up by the rhythms of season, plant and animal, becomes paved over and concrete civilization, dominated by number… and money.

And it is not easily reversed. Head out to the cottage or camping for a weekend and try as we might, we bring the city with us.

Now this post is not meant to bum anyone out. It simply is and where we are today.

Free, in a sense.

Abstracted from earth bound rhythms, seasons and soil, we feel the loss but are free to fill the void with whatever turns our crank. Next door to me the mother of two lusty little boys tends her garden lovingly all summer long; last night walking urban streets I was struck by the number of people in fitness wear and slung-over-shoulder-yoga-mat; plus all the shops catering to urbanites with exotic ornamentals gleaned from around the world: Tibet, Egypt, India, faux runes from Northern Europe.

It’s who we are now, unbound and free.

Rootless.