City Mouse Country Mouse

A few of my friends from Boulder have more than once commented on their preference of oceans rather than mountains, claiming to endure a peculiar sense of claustrophobia caused by the omnipresent rock faces and glaciers hovering among the clouds. "Landlocked" is the official diagnosis. Not surprisingly, they have mostly relocated to the east and west coasts -and good for them too, no one wants that kind of looming entrapment mucking about.

For me, however, it's the in the city where I feel the most trapped. As much as I like people and crowds, and the bustle that often accompanies them, I much prefer to be among them in the open spaces of parks, sidewalks, bike paths, amphitheaters, etc. Rather than the tightly closed spaces of elevators, cars, buses, subways and cubicles. I like to look up and see stars at night, and occasionally confuse clouds as part of the mountain terrain.

But it comes as no surprise that this blog was started in a city. In Pittsburgh nonetheless. Nor do I think it was by pure happenstance as I was packing my things to return west that I opened Henry Miller's "The Air Conditioned Nightmare" (a collection of essays concerning his cross-country trek to discover America) to surprisingly find this opening:

"It was in a hotel room in Pittsburgh that I finished the book on Ramakrishna by Romain Rolland. Pittsburgh and Ramakrishna - could any more violent contrast be possible? The one the symbol of brutal power and wealth, the other the very incarnation of love and wisdom. We begin here then, in the very quick of the nightmare, in the crucible where all values are reduced to slag." -his tirade, in true Miller fashion, only goes on from there.

Had I remembered this bit of text or had I any sense of foreshadowing I doubt very much I would have ever ventured into the city. Perhaps too, I would have left sooner had I taken heed to the one question I was asked more than any other, particularly after having mentioned I had come from Boulder, "Why Pittsburgh?" Of course, the question came in various forms, all with an utterance of surprise and disbelief. Yet, my answer was always that I had a friend there. No other reason. Nor is there a better one I think. And need there even be one?

Thankfully I left having made a few more. And though I often detested my time there, I don't regret having lived and worked in the 'burgh for those two years. I speak of them almost as though they were more than a decade ago. When in fact I've only just now turned the corner from that chapter in my life.

To digress a moment, today I came across this brief interview with Enrique Penalosa, a name I wouldn't know had it not been for Dr. Paul Simpson, who I met in Pittsburgh, and who in no small way inspired the creation of (and has contributed to) this blog.

My role in the 'burgh, chiefly at the advertising agency I worked at, seemed one of necessity, though I can't especially say it was thought so in the minds of very many. Yes, it was strictly a matter of circumstance that I came to coin the phrase, "Sticking out like a green thumb." Something not likely to happen here in Boulder. In Pittsburgh, as far as I know, I may have very well been the only independent environmental blogger in the city.