The DC discussion last week about the catastrophes in Japan, as well as about the photography of John Ganis depicting the degradation of the environment by human activity, suggests to me an important aesthetic issue, not immediately tied to the moral and political problems of the day, but illuminating them. We must remember in this time of crisis that the taming of the natural world doesn’t only degrade but also enhances our environment and its beauty.
I often think about this running around my neighborhood. I have two basic running routes, one involves just going out my front door, down a long winding road in the direction of Washington Irving’s House, Sunnyside, continuing my run on the Old Croton Aqueduct, a very beautiful and exhilarating experience. Even more spectacular is an alternative run requiring a short car ride to the compound of the Rockefeller family. The Rockefellers still live in its many mansions and fine homes, but a significant portion of their estate has become a beautiful state park, with 40 miles of bridal paths, now making for a runner’s paradise.
Bill Clinton sometimes runs at Rockefeller, as does Khalid Khannouchi, a former world record holder in the marathon and many lesser runners from the area and way beyond. Running there is like running through a Jane Austen novel. This is no accident. The paths and bridges were designed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. for John D. Rockefeller Sr. The hills and valleys and the streams are like those in the woods closer to my house. But I make a point to go to the park, as Junior’s gift for his great robber baron father demonstrates the beauty of human intervention and imagination. This is clear at all times, in good weather and in bad.
A few years ago, a hurricane brushed our area, washing away one of the bridges. Many of these (designed John D. Jr. himself) are made of cobbled stone. They are as graceful as the river banks, and become part of the landscape with their colors and textures. On a nice day after the storm, I came across the replacement of the destroyed bridge. It wasn’t made of stone. It didn’t try to simulate the old technologies, but was modern, made of steel, already showing the rich warm rust colors of fall leaves, with a bit of wood looking as if it could have come from one of the surrounding trees. I slowed down to admire it, noticing a man looking at it. “Nice bridge,” I said, and he, to my surprise, replied, “Thank you.” I never got his name. I ran off before thinking that it would have been nice to know, but I surmised he was the architect, someone who had enhanced this story book setting with as much appreciation and artistry as that of John D. Rockefeller Jr., who helped lay out the estate for his father, and also for me.
I was reminded of this incident last week during one of my runs as the horror in Japan was unfolding. While this has been a week of grave natural disasters in Japan, the week in the New York metropolitan area was on the slightly rough side, especially north of the city up the Hudson River. We had heavy rain, flooding many major roads. Getting from here to there was a bother. When I made it to my favorite running path at Rockefeller, a babbling brook had become an overflowing river with raging rapids. The path crisscrosses streams of the park, and a section is named “Thirteen Bridges.” Last weekend, some of the bridges just barely covered the streams. And the old bridges, along with the new one, allowed the runners, hikers, individuals and families out for a walk, with and without their dogs, and a rider on horseback, to pass over, to be a part of an enhanced nature. Modern and traditional technologies were part of the solution, not the problem.
Discerning when we compromise our natural environment, and when we support and enhance the natural world, is the political challenge, for example, when we decide the great energy debate of fossil fuel versus nuclear technology, and as we seek the alternatives of the sun, the waters and the winds.
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