Surrounded

I've been watching Ken Burns' National Parks documentary on PBS. A really wonderful work - beautiful and touching, and completely gripping, despite being about a somewhat esoteric subject.

But ultimately, it makes me sad.

I've seen many of these beautiful places whose histories are recounted in the series - but it's been way too long. Almost 15 years for some of them. The show reminds me how much is lost - how much is sacrificed - by living a responsible life in the city, holding down a job and paying the bills. Especially here in Georgia, where all those western landscapes that I love more than anywhere else are so impossibly far away.

Would I be better off living hand-to-mouth in a tent somewhere on a mountain?

Probably not.

But I do know that every day spent in an office, every day spent in the concrete prison of this damned city, is a day another piece of me dies.