From a letter I sent to some urban friend who was wondering if I am still stuck in the sticks, and if so, how I get by:

I am not only getting by here, this is where I really LIVE! Chicago is where I spend 8.5 months of the year w/out mountains to climb, without steep slopes to conquer on my old bike, without swift and freezing mountain streams to swim naked in all by myself in the heat of day, without the essential and indispensable smell of cow shit, without fields of alfalfa hay, corn, sheeps grazing, cows regurgitating; in short - without the Earth living! I cannot live without it, life without it for me is just an in-between existence, during which I am a mere fraction of my total, whole self. To be manifest, that self requires cow shit, mountains, streams, rain and snow, heat waves lightnings and thunders, boulders displaced by overflowing streams, the tangible ebb and flow of the midlatitude weather systems ceaselessly, inexorably moving from west to east, one low followed in a lockstep by the next high, which is only as permanent as the one before it. Only then, when all elements of nature are allowed unadulterated expression, only then can I breathe to my lungs capacity and say - That's life, and I am alive!