Among Big Trees, Comfort is Found

Sometimes, when your material circumstances have been diminished, the best thing you can do is to return to nature. When you are out of work in a city like this one, where so many still blithely drive around in fancy cars and eat in fancy restaurants, you can feel small.



But these are simply cultural feelings, not rooted in true physical reality but in the false comparative insecurities of an American middle class that remains hopelessly ignorant about how privileged we really are -- in or out of work, with or without savings, in possession or not of the latest electronic gadgets and tools.



Walk through a redwood grove (this one is in Muir Woods) and you will feel small in a much more healthy way. The air smells different under these giant trees -- cleaner, because they clean it.

The music of the creek that moves among these ancient beings will remind you of another place, somewhere sweeter and safer-feeling than the city with its boiling anger and tension, as the recession deepens.

Those on the margins now break into our cars, our houses, or they mug us, seeking survival funds to sustain bad habits adopted in lieu of doing the hard work of coming to grips with who each of us is in this complex society, the richest on earth, yet still filled with people so uncertain and so unused to sacrificing on behalf of their families or others that the slightest reduction in lifestyle is interpreted as a loss of entitlement.

I am one of those hurting, truly, in this economic downturn. I do not yet know how I can support my precious family going forward, and the resources I've been able to save are rapidly diminishing.

Radical action may be called for, perhaps even leaving this city I've called home for 37 of the past 38 years. But, whatever I need to do to survive and provide, I will gladly do.

Here are my current ideas: A bunch of chicken livers are cheap, unlike chicken meat. Salads can be grown; there is no need to buy lettuce here. Adult males don't need new clothes (females are another story); kids do need clothes but they can be purchased at second-hand stores. Almost all other consumption can be delayed until some future moment when resources become more readily available.

As for our biggest expense, can we really afford to continue living alone or in pairs? If you have enough space to sublet, you should do so quickly and reduce both your burn rate and that of your subletee.

This is an age for conserving what we have and consuming as little as we need. It is not a time to be concerned about what anybody else thinks. What is the minimum that you really need to get by?

As this is developing into possibly the worst depression of our lifetimes, this is the only salient question. Take only what you need, and leave the rest.

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