Country club Why are even some of the toughest city dwellers scared off by a stand of evergreens? BY REBECCA WIEDER

When we urbanites feel hemmed in by the asphalt confines of city life, it’s tempting to look to the Country — or if we’re really serious, to Nature — for respite. Ah, the Country, where the smell of animal excrement harks back to the bygone era of the family farm, rather than causing us to wonder whether the dookie is of the dog or human variety. The Country, where one is gloriously out-of-range, free from the obligations that order our lives and the expectations and judgments of our peers. Where the sun is brighter, the air cleaner, and we are somehow better.

It is a seductive fantasy, one that pulls us from our cramped hovels and deposits us on the back roads of New England and beyond, especially during the holidays. And if we hear the siren’s call a little too clearly, we might even find ourselves celebrating the New Year in the roadless Neverland of Nature.

But like so many fantasies, this one doesn’t necessarily deliver the goods. City dwellers, by definition, have a tenuous relationship with the Country. First of all, we are used to the "park" species of Nature — the kind of nature that is bordered by the reassuring lights of corner stores and cafés, where we can stock up before going into the wilderness and replenish after our return. It sounds — and perhaps is — pathetic, but if you’ve ever seen city people schlepping their way to the park for the afternoon, you know of what I speak.

Part of the joy of living in a city is the proximity and availability of everything — not just things we want at the moment, but things in general; things that we might want in two hours after we’ve digested brunch, or gotten into (or out of) a relationship, or decided to take up French or kung fu. In other words, it’s not our actual desire to consume that keeps us paying half our salary in rent; it’s our need for potential consumption at will, without getting in the car, without going to Wal-Mart or Stop & Shop.

And, as many of us have discovered a day or two into our adventures in Nature, this is not possible in the Country. In theory, this is not a bad thing. We know, we know: people are too attached to material things, to convenience, to good coffee and a decent newspaper. But it is hard to shake the nervous feeling that creeps up in city dwellers when we venture out of our trolley-tracked worlds. What if there’s an emergency? Like hunger, or an attack of irritable-bowel syndrome?

Yes, this is the sad state of urban life. But we should be relieved that it’s not our fault. We are trained early on to cling to the gridded streets of the city. Recently, I sent my ninth-grade students to a regional park to enliven their sense of the local history I had been teaching. Because our community is wracked with gun violence and other urban blights, I thought my students would find this sojourn in Nature to be peaceful, or at least a welcome change from the chaos of metropolitan life. Instead, they reported that the woods were "scary," "creepy," and "too quiet." They marveled at the prevalence of "horse poop," and one student wondered "where the restaurant was." Born and raised in the city, these kids express more fear of ancient redwoods than they do of their own violent neighborhoods.

It makes sense: fear of the unknown always trumps fear of the familiar. The everyday discomforts of a city — the pollution and car-choked streets, the eternal quests for parking spaces and a seat on the bus — are worthy of our complaints but don’t earn true contempt. These discomforts can become, in their familiarity, inextricably tied with the more positive aspects of city life. On the other hand, the smells and sounds of Nature — so exalted in our imagination — can suggest a dark and foreign underbelly. For some city folk, horse poop portends something more horrible than the occasional human turd on the apartment steps.

Our simultaneous longing for and fear of Nature hasn’t been lost on advertising companies. Car commercials, for example, once called upon a steady rotation of women, social status, and the great outdoors to sell the latest model. Now, perhaps confronted by the reality that remarkably few men get laid on the merits of their automobiles, car advertisers stick to a car’s ability to tough out a Utah desert or the Rocky Mountains to sell their wares.

In these commercials — and in our fantasies — freedom is about getting away from it all. But what these advertisers know is that in reality, we think freedom is getting away from it all in the comfort of our cars. As a die-hard urbanite friend once said, Nature is beautiful, especially when your music is on and there’s good coffee in the drink holder.

Is this the solution to our Country conundrum? Frankly, it’s a little embarrassing to think that we city dwellers, who pride ourselves on our ability to navigate the hazards of public transportation and high-density living, would be scared off by a stand of evergreens. But as the holidays pass and urbanites return to their positions in the cafés and bus shelters of the city, there are more than a few who breathe in the smell of exhaust, feel the crush of sleepy bodies on the subway, and know that they are back, safely, at home.

Rebecca Wieder can be reached at rebezca@juno.com