Lynn Ruth Miller: The Road Less Travelled
Lynn Ruth Miller poses a solution to the problem of pollution
It turns out that Robert Frost was a lot wiser than we thought. A London researcher discovered that we could reduce the amount of pollution we breathe by half if we walk on empty streets and deserted neighborhoods. In fact, almost 9% of all deaths in the London area are caused by pollution. If we want to stay healthy, the trick is to creep around the dark alleys and tiny garden paths where no one else goes. It might take longer, but will add years to our lives, so we can spare the time.
I wish someone had told my mother that. She was the one who warned me never to walk anywhere at night if the streetlights were not blazing my trail. It was she who cautioned me to tread the crowded thoroughfares lest I be mugged, robbed or molested. And, good girl that I was, I obeyed.
“If we want to stay healthy, the trick is to creep around dark alleys”
The trouble was that as I got older, I walked less and less and drove more and more … breathing in car exhaust, motor fumes and traffic effluvia not to mention dust, dandruff and human breath. When I did walk, I never strayed off the beaten path for fear that some unknown ‘something’ would jump out of somewhere and demolish me. If research is right, my lungs are so blackened with tar, dust and particles of god only knows what, that it is a miracle I am alive.
Such are the hazards of city life.
I did live in the country for a short period of time in the late seventies. It was in rural Texas, and I have to say that my lungs were clear as a bell because I was breathing fresh, unpolluted air. However, country air has unexpected dangers of its own; there was a place called The Blue Hole where the air was drenched with marijuana, and one inhalation could numb my mind for days. In Texas, we purged our souls and aired out our ventricles by singing gospel – when we filled the air with the grace of the lord, it seemed to balance the effect of the pot we mainlined all day.
The year I was in Texas, the heat was so intense that I made breakfast by boiling water on the front step and frying eggs and bacon on my threshold. I never once lit a stove or dirtied a pan, but I ate a lot of dirt and gravel. We lit nightly bonfires in those days and inhaled smoke from tobacco, cannabis and rotten logs.
Still, I have to say, in Texas as in most of the USA, a lot more of us die from bullets than we do from pollution. In the UK it is the other way around. Which all goes to prove that if one thing doesn’t kill you, another will.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
– Robert Frost
