A group of natives of the Andes was taken under contract to work in a modern city. Lodging was arranged for them on the second floor of a house. On seeing it, they earnestly pleaded to be allowed to live on the ground floor. On the second floor they lost direct contact with earth, and they could not live that way.

What would have they said, had they been housed in the twentieth storey of a skyscraper? What would have they felt on seeing themselves hemmed in on all sides by iron and concrete in the hardened shell of soundproof isolation? How would have they breathed and eaten and moved and slept cut off from the ground by the strange framework of beams and stairways and ceilings and lifts? How would they have lived without the earth?

For the aboriginal, anywhere in the world, Mother Earth is still a mother. They need her nearness, her contact, her bosom in order to feel safe and cared for while they explore life. Their naked feet on the live soil are uninterrupted dialogue of information given and received, of personal messages, of physically-felt love. To sit under a tree is for them restful intimacy. To lie down on fresh grass is Nirvana. The smells and sounds of the countryside, the perfumes of the air and the games of the breeze, the parallel colours of the standing harvest, the upright guard of the watchful trees, the wild running of the waters in pristine purity. A whole world of hearty and strong sensations that cleanse the body and rejoice the soul. A life lived close to Mother Earth. To lose it is to become orphans. And we have lost it.

We do not even see the earth any more. We have covered it with a layer of asphalt and cement all through the length and breadth of he spaces in which we live. We are strangers to its surface. And when the cement feels rough in our homes, we spread carpets on it to cheat our feet. Layer upon layer. Forced exile. Compulsive bereavement. We have lost the kinship, the contact, the language. We do not speak any more with our Mother. The delicate Morse code that naked feet tapped on the live skin of our planet has been forgotten and replaced by the hammering of military heels on the cobblestones of spectral avenues. Our walking is no more conversation, it is a fight. We hurt the earth. And our feet hurt back.

To recover the earth we still feel the need to “get out” and seek the open spaces. But even then, the stark reality is the highway and the car and the restaurant and the hotel. And the excursion gear and the thick socks and the stiff boots that would do honour to a professional astronaut. One has to “protect” oneself for the adventure. And every protection is isolation. And every isolation is a loss.

Maybe we cannot go back to aboriginal innocence. But we can at least appreciate it openly and envy it secretly. I admire my brothers, true sons of the earth, who reacted so fast against a second floor because it deprived them of their essential closeness to their roots. At least I feel joy at the incident. I would like to learn from them their sensitivity before nature in all its manifestations. To learn to love the earth. To call her mother. Perhaps even to prefer to live in a ground floor and to mistrust lifts. The lower, the better.