I’m in the midst of a floral maelstrom. A whirlwind of color and fragrance. Cream, lavender, crimson, ruby, pearl, and saffron inundate. An intoxication of scents, heady and unnerving, dazes me. I close my eyes. Hear the woozy buzzing of a pollinator. Drunk on nectar, the bee swoops haphazardly among petals, alights for an instant on a leaf, before flitting to other desserts. Ambling the terraced garden, I’m reminded how integral public spaces were to my childhood. Deciphering paths, forging connections with tree and bird, reading about other realities, learning friendships in community places that welcomed all without making demands was profound to my understanding of life.
I still treasure them, but find these gathering spots dwindled and constrained. I think about the importance of playgrounds as I navigate winged insects and fellow humans among the tousled rhododendrons. Once, four of us used to convene whenever we could in a forgotten spruce grove behind our school in order to birth kingdoms. In the dim, eerie thicket we explored our multiplicities, built and destroyed borders, excavated our darkest fears as we rooted kinships with one another and our environs.
While this childhood escapism had its purpose, something else is evident in this rose garden. The romanticisms of “wilderness” have no place in my adult world. The garden is not only a space generated over an interval of time, but a lacework of relationships that cannot exist without maintenance. Bees, birds, blooms, and bacteria care for one another in complicated, often unseen ways. Humans must tend to the grounds too — weeding, watering, pruning, replanting — receptive, cyclical tasks that sustain and witness all who inhabit the place. Just as no person exists in true isolation, no location can either. A city, a park, a forest, or a garden — these are living, mutating organisms. They cannot be thought of as static backgrounds or simple commodities.
I continue to struggle against the falsehoods of individualism and atomization. I long to exercise control, to sanctify the ego. Community making and kin tending are not easy. Interdependence is messy.
It’s taken me a long time to view landscape as more than pleasurable pastime or a backdrop to my actions. Walking through an elm corridor beyond the roses, I reconsider my ideas of belonging, my assumptions about what a gathering space should or should not be. The truth about going out “on one’s own,” is that I’m never truly alone on this planet. I can’t imagine a life without moss and worms and sludge. It would be a life without birds, and trees, and soil. I acknowledge: the wild nourishes all the possibilities in me, the mysteries, the depths.
It begins with reciprocity. You and I are linked to all the beings in all the spaces we find ourselves. If I want to honor you. If I want to cultivate the soil. If I want to listen to the neglected undergrowth. If I want to minister to the needs of mycorrhiza, then I must unravel my interior enclosures, undo the walls and gates I’ve built up in hopes of protection. A gathering space for all can only be created when we nurture such places within ourselves.
Bespoke Traveler Note:
“How To Do Nothing,” by Jenny Odell examines the sort of spaces vital to nurturing lives of care and attention. Find it at your public library or local bookstore.
Thanks for listening. “Gathering Space” was written and narrated by Atreyee Gupta. For more, head to our website at: https://www.bespoketraveler.com.
