Wild Time

Wilderness was the condition of the world within which mankind lived in perplexed pockets, plotting our little patches of garden plots hard by the great forests of wilderness. But then the human race gigantized in development, exploded in population across the world so that, past a critical point, wilderness and mankind changed places. It is now something we surround; there are pitiful pockets of wilderness dotted across the world; wilderness is now the exception, and mankind the condition of landscape.

This is a model for our relationship with time: for, once, humans were surrounded by wild time and the stretch of time was everlasting, undefined, unenclosed, unnamed, unchartered—and into this eternity mankind was dotted, pitiful with our perplexed pocket watches and our brief lives, plotting our little watches of hours hard by the great eternities of wild time. Then we began to chart time, to clock it, plot it, measure and mark it, buy and sell it. As wilderness and humanity changed places, so too have wild time and mankind now swapped positions. Past a critical moment of moment-measuring, Western society’s peculiar time-marking has become standard, a norm; the Western clock the condition of time and wild time the exception.

(Source: A Sideways Look at Time—Jay Griffiths)