A Highway, A Beautiful Rush Hour
This might be the oldest highway in the world.
If not, it is at least one of the more interesting ones.
According to the eldest woman in the village, the highway has been here since anyone can remember.
In fact, it is among the first things mentioned in human historical records, and those go back a few thousand years in these parts.
Like any highway, there is traffic here day and night, but ‘rush hour’ comes as the sun rises, and then again, as the sun sets. According to the people who live here, this rush hour is the most beautiful time.
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How can a highway can last for a few thousand years?
And how can a rush hour be beautiful?
In this highway, there is no concrete. No steel. No asphalt.
It is composed instead of three inter-related happenings:
The landform — A narrow pass along a small mountain ridge, between the ocean and a small inner valley.
The wind — Riding that landform, it flows from sea to valley during the day, and back again from valley to sea in the evening.
The birds — Mainly seagulls, heron, and crows, but also sparrows, warblers, magpies, redstarts, bulbuls, cuckoos and dozens of others. It is the commuting birds who make this ancient air-highway visible.
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This is not a unique phenomenon. There are many natural highways in the world, for various other living beings.
Most humans used to have them, too — ways to walk safely and peacefully from place to place. To move in step with this Earth. Closely. One foot, then the next.
One step.
One chance to notice — who we are, where we are going.
Where, are we going?
Questions: What kinds of non-human highways exist in your part of the world? Are there still natural ‘walking’ highways for humans where you live? If not, where would you want to make one? Take that idea to your city council.
Next Week: We get back to the Urban River series one last time, for some fishing.
Another Story: Can a park be a commuting route? Yes it can. On a walk in San Jose, California, I explore the meaning of a ‘parkway’ with Juanjuan, and his magical ideas from Barcelona.
SHORT #23: The Guadalupe Parkway of Juanjuan's Dreams
I wondered why Juanjuan was so excited to see it. We had been friends for twelve years, after meeting along the tree-lined streets of his old Poblenou neighborhood in Barcelona. This was his first visit to the United States and somehow, all he wanted to see was the Parkway.
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We're in process of what's referred to as "downsizing", from a three bedroom two storey detached property with stair lift installed to a two bedroom ground floor flat with a wet room.
In the house the garden's long since got the better of me, burgeoning in its rampant overgrown bliss. In the flat well, even before we get to live in it, the gardening is taken care of consequent of the twice yearly Service Charge.
Here's the thing Patrick: it's the bats that we'll miss; living as we seem to do on a nightly, come every Spring and Summer seasonal sundown, super-flying-highway for each and every self-respecting Pipistrel in our neighbourhood.
Great, as in most genially thought provocative, post, Thank you Patrick.
That’s cool. And then there’s the highways that go UP (thermals). Watching birds travel on those is always a bit envy-inducing.