Which town?

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Some individual natures, however, felt the need of guidance, of personal directives, of a method of practice, of a physical reference. In the world at large, the lack of a spiritual dimension was increasingly felt : an efflorescence of masters and techniques was spreading abroad – the esoterica of yesteryear were finding well-prized niches. Complementing this awakening, an acute awareness was beginning to rise and develop of the multiple damages humanity was inflicting on terrestrial Nature = indeed, our humanity was turning out to be malfeasant. And it would be one of the duties of Her city to show the example of practices and conducts that respect, honor and enrich the very life of the earth. This aspiration had, for many, the breadth and intensity of a religion and it had been the vocation elected by a number of the pioneers of Her city = to demonstrate the actual possibility of an individual and collective human existence in harmony with the universe – beginning with the smallest detail and the least implication of each daily activity (what is nowadays termed as “ecological sensibility”, but we could never have at the time even envisaged the scope and reach of the disasters yet to come.)

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Those who worked the land, irrigated and nourished the fields, planted the trees and protected their tender shoots from the greedy goats, channeled and dammed the flow of the rain waters in the ravines and sowed the seeds along the paths, often spattered with orange mud, hirsute with

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