- Gravel is mined across the highway from where I live.
When I walk through the mined area I see large machinery, mountains of gravel,
conveyer belts. A couple of rabbits make their homes there, protected from the
Coyotes and foxes that live the more wild areas. It is large and empty and
desolate for the most part.
The 300 acres of open land where I walk every morning was also a gravel pit. 40 years of being left alone has transformed it into Cottonwood woodlands, meadows, and cattail wetlands. Some old Cottonwoods that predated the gravel mining live there as the partiarchs of the green belt.
I consider this land my home land, because of my habit of walking it each morning at first light with my dogs. The Cottonwoods and meadows and ponds and lakes are a well spring of knowledge and inspiration for me. I am awed at the subtle differences of each morning, and the everpresent beauty there. I find that this landscape had imprinted itself on my heart, and I do not apologize for being sentimental about it.
My dogs and I are not alone in enjoying the beauty of this former wasteland.
One morning an elderly lady came up behind me and startled me while I was watching a fox come up along the river towards my dogs and me. She said she did want to disturb me if had spotted something. I said no, I was just watching that little fox approach.
She said, 'Oh yes, sometimes they walk right along beside you.'
Each morning I see many of the same walkers, and greet them when we pass. These people are my neighbors, we share a bond in daily enjoying a wild area close to home. I see them walking slowly, scanning the tree tops with their binoculars, pointing out red shafted flickers or downy woodpeckers resonating their wooden pounding through the cool morning air.
Others walk fast, in groups, for exercise, talking so fast and loudly that I wonder if they see any of the landscape they are passing.
I have stopped trying to convince the old man that he is not helping the foxes by giving them raw hamburger every day. I see him crouched down on his knees, holding food out to a fox that is just a few feet away.
A lady stands next to where the foxes show themselves every morning, quietly talking to them. I stop. She gets up and walks past, embarrassed.
It is hard to measure what this open space means to my community. It is a wild place near our homes, a place to get out and walk and wonder. A place that enriches many lives in different ways. A place that is used. For me and many others it is a wasteland that has become a treasured place to witness nature close to home.
