So it looks like we’ll be returning to Canada later this summer without a car. It will be the first time in our married life we’ve gone without one. The nearly $2000 we were told it would take to fix it forced us to choose between jeopardizing our ability to return and stay in Canada or the car. While the decision caused us a day or so of angst, in the end it wasn’t that difficult and Canada won out.
However, facing life without a car did make me question my freedom. If you took a poll of Americans and Canadians asking what material possession they associated most with freedom, the car would likely get a majority of the votes. The sample size would probably need to be huge to find someone in either country who seriously questioned the premise of the question.
My own initial reaction was to make a mental list of all the inconveniences we would be enduring over the next two years or so without a vehicle. From trips to Costco to regular weekend hikes, the pending perceived decline in my own freedom was palpable. The “inability” to regularly escape into nature caused me the most dread.
But facing the inevitable can, if we let it, cause us to look at the situation from a different perspective. For one thing, the fact I had come to see regular walks to the store for a bag or two of groceries as an inconvenience, or nature as something necessarily far away and remote was, when I stopped to consider it, quite sad.
The idea we need to climb into a steel, glass, and plastic box resting on four synthetic rubber wheels and contribute to global warming in order to truly experience nature is, truth be told, insane. Humans have been around for nearly 250,000 years or so now. Automobiles are little more than 120 years old. It’s difficult to make the case they’re a necessity given those numbers. Add in statistics on the sheer tons of carbon dioxide emitted and almost weekly headlines about oil spills and the notion becomes even crazier. Besides, if we really want or need to go somewhere that requires a car we can rent one for far less than it would cost to own one.
The automobile has gotten untold millions of people that otherwise never would have gone to the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Banff and Jasper, just to name a few. But it’s not at all clear the thousands of kilometres of roads and hectares of parking lots built in those places to accommodate those people are an improvement. Nor is it obvious that 90% or more of those visitors have done anything other than park and walk a few hundred metres at most to the nearest scenic overlook or nearby attraction. One could learn more about nature and feel greater wonder by renting a DVD or reading a national park’s Wikipedia page. We’ve gotten a lot better at going places and a lot worse at developing a sense of place.
I’m not ruling out ever owning a car again, but not having one for the next year or so means I’m ruling in getting to know the world of southern Vancouver Island much more intimately. The worst possible outcome, as I see it, is only achieving a smaller carbon footprint for a year or two, and the experience is likely to prove more personally satisfying than that. Regardless, in this day and age, that’s justification enough for a silver lining to going carless for a while.
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