A HUMAN-SATURATED NATURE

If without birds, Kyoto's winter sky would be completely still, with orderly roofs sitting under the heavy mountain silhouettes. Tracing birds across Kyoto's repetitive blocks, I inevitably ended up at Kamo River: a shallow stream of water and aqua-plants that runs through Kyoto's north-south axis, contributing the only major curvature to the rigid urban checkerboard.

However, Kamo River is not necessarily a bird paradise that cut through the human-saturated urbanity. Instead, my walks saw a human-saturated nature with obvious evidence of built interventions in its paved pathways and bridges serving diverse human activities. Showering under a golden sunset, people walked, paused, and sit along the river. Some dressed as if they came directly from office cubes; some staged themselves at the center of the esplanade to show off their kimonos; some adventured off track to get their shoes wet on the gravel paths across the water. Their only common laid on the joyful faces that differentiate them from those between crowded buildings and rumbling streets. 

The scenes raised my concerns about human's deprivation of the last nature in infinite urbanization. However, I somehow reclaimed my optimism when capturing a man's genuine smile when he was surrounded by a crowd of pigeons. Despite witnessing the cultivation and artificialization of nature in our cities, I still believe in humanity for sensing nature's preciousness that would raise our ultimate will to rescue it.