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Two days ago, the first day of 2007 found me up in the foothills with my family for a long drive. Not necessarily the most eco-friendly activity from a fuel consumption perspective, but I needed to get out of the city for a spell and clear my head and felt that a strong dose of clean air and wide open vistas would be as good a way of starting the New Year as any. We meandered up through Auburn and Grass Valley and Nevada City, zig-zagging through the older parts of these small towns and their surrounding neighborhoods.

Somewhere around Auburn, after about 90 minutes in the car, my 7 year old daughter, completely outfitted head to toe in her brand-new, Native American outfit, said, “Can we find a place where I can run around, where there’s no buildings and just lots of grass?”

I love the honesty of children about their needs. Kids need open spaces. I just started reading Mas Masumoto’s elegaic journal “Epitaph for a Peach” and found myself pausing on page 7 after reading the statement, “Enveloped by nature, a child’s imagination soars.” A jumble of images from my own childhood flashed across the screen of my mind: from age 3 to age 7, I lived in the middle of Sonoma County orchards and vineyards, and I have stronger memories from those years than the following four years when we moved to the suburbs of Santa Rosa—small garden snakes, strawberry plants along the sideyard, old wasp nests in the garage, the pollen pods on the pine tree, the smell of fermenting pears and grapes, the tang of wild mustard, the Russian River swelling and pregnant from winter rains. I can’t fully explain the depth and breath of the impact of these few years on my identity formation but I know these experiences comprise some of the most fertile ground in my consciousness—and I can see a clear vector that runs from them to my eco-urban sensibilities.

Adults need open spaces too; some need more space than others, and some need more time in open spaces than others—the Thoreau’s and Jack London’s among us–but we all, not just children, need open spaces where our imaginations can run around, take wing and soar. I equate it to the need for sanctuary, a “return to Eden” kind of longing that just comes with being human. But, regardless of any one person’s particular spiritual bent, our connection to the earth, to bodies of water, to undisrupted sky, to flora and fauna seems to runs parallel with our spiritual cognizance, if at no other level than the mysterious source of a soaring imagination.

At its deepest level, I see this need for open space as a need for something larger than ourselves, larger than what we, in and of ourselves, can control and dominate and own. It’s the “enveloped by” characteristic of Nature that Masumoto points us to. When I look into a glen of trees and can’t see the end of them, when I look up the incline of a mountain and wonder what’s on the other side, when I look up into the sky and see stars I can’t begin to count, I have to humbly acknowledge my own finitude, my limitations, my boundaries. And this is where imagination steps in. Creativity flourishes just beyond edges and boundaries and, as such, requires their very existence; when we have no boundaries, when we see no end to ourselves, inspiration withers and dries up. Without the reminder of our dependence on a “greater than” ourselves, without open spaces that supercede concepts of “ownership,” we run the risk of becoming megalomaniacs and narcissistic.

Conceptually, “open spaces” doesn’t have to translate directly into acreage. Its more about sanctuary than about size. If this weren’t true, what hope for imagination could we offer those for whom a drive to the foothills isn’t possible. My daughter runs with as much gleeful abandon in the small pocket park down the street as she would over hill and dale. Community gardens, though squarely planted in the built landscape, add some of the same inspired respite and “envelopment” for blighted neighborhoods as open fields and shady woods.

And open spaces can also be viewed metaphorically, with the same conclusions. Open spaces of time foster a sense of grounding and reflection that often rewrite our priorities. Open spaces of perspective welcome diverse ideas that generates a kind of “greater than ourselves” necessary for creative, life-infused community.

So back to the foothills. We did end up finding a spot that fit our need, although not my daughter’s exact request. It was a lovely community park called Pioneer Park nestled in a meadow among a small enclave of neighborly homes in Nevada City. It had lots of room to roam and the air was cool and sweet. And I, for one, came home with a soaring imagination for 2007.

Jason