Suburban Nature: The Myth

There is no nature in Suburbia.

For the past few weeks suburban life has been irking me. My soul requires sunshine, rain, good dirt, and general outdoorsiness to survive. (My soul is very plant-like.) Sunshine and rain have been present; however, nature is nowhere to be found. Being outside in my town makes me want to retch. The only trees are landscaped and trimmed for size and color. The grass is mowed, edged, raked, watered, and in the case of my neighbors- DRIED to perfection. The only flowers are found in planters or beds; the rest labeled "weeds," and ripped out of the ground.

Even the wooded areas here are planned. Notice I didn't say "woods." That implies something related to nature. Our wooded parks are planted, and so obviously planted that if you face the trees straight on you can see them growing in rows. Seriously? There's no ground cover, no brush. No brambles or bushes or vines. I suspect tax dollars pay to weed and fertilize the area.

Trees are cut down before they can fall, which is a safety issue and is understood; but even the trees that fall far from the paved, level, roller-blade and wheelchair accessible trail are sectioned and hauled away. Nature's Playground? What's that? In elementary school one of my favorite things to play on during recess was a fallen tree. The branches and roots had been cut off, and it had been dragged from the surrounding woods onto the playground by parents and teachers years before. We climbed it, walked on it, jumped off it, gossiped on it, ran around it, and carved in it. We watched the bugs make homes in it, saw new life grow because of it. The tree was dragged back into the woods shortly before I moved on to another school.

Those woods were amazing. We would take walks there during science classes, identifying trees, plants, cloud formations, rock types, and bugs. The trees were far enough apart to allow us room to run, but their canopies were interlaced, forming a latticework of leaves that filtered the sunlight down to us as if the golden rays had been hand-picked. There was a drainage ditch we all called "the creek," which was a prime source of after school entertainment. It served as the boundary where younger kids wouldn't cross, and older kids flaunted their authority. It was prime real estate for teetering tree houses, crooked bike jumps, paintball wars, endless games of capture the flag, and even an old moldy couch whose origin nobody quite knew. The creek was cold and always seemed so deep. To cross it we snuck boards from our garages and rooted through garbage cans and made a rickety, ramshackle bridge. Nobody ever swam in the water, or even stepped in it. To the right was 100 feet of trees, then the road. To the left, was woods and more woods until "the catwalk" where the water emptied to a flood field and houses began. The water itself was home to old pop cans, beer bottles (most likely left behind when the high school kids hit curfew and had to return home,) a volleyball, and one lonesome busted up lawn chair that was there for as long as I can remember. It was magical.

Where those woods once stood now lay perfect rows of condominiums, complete with landscaped yards, lawns rolled out like carpets, and sprinklers that are set on a timer so that they go off even when it's raining. The creek was filled, the trees cut. Where trees used to tower higher than the school are now balconies with white plastic railings. The clearing where dirt bikes roared until dark, then a less-then legal bonfire would crackle while we watched the stars... is now a parking lot, complete with the blue glow of halogen high beam lights. All our memories, our carvings, our childhood... disappeared within a week. The school fenced in their property, no longer venturing out to identify what's left in suburban nature: the Jaguar, the Sequoia, and the Jeep Liberty.

Moving away from my digression, suburban life holds little of natural life. The stars still blaze, but are dimmed to near darkness by neon signs and front porch lights. The only constellation that can be seen regularly is the Big Dipper, and even those stars are becoming hard to identify against the glare of suburban sprawl. The moon has been brilliant lately, so bright and white that you can see the clouds across the sky. The effect is less than breathtaking when the shooting star you see turns out to be a commercial airliner.

Light pollution is possibly one of the most understated environmental factors in my lifetime. Cities are encased in a 24-hour glow of light that can be seen from miles away. A dome of light surrounding a city sounds almost beautiful, unless you are trying to look at the sky or find grass. These lights signify the devastation of natural land, the ravaging of Mother Earth. None of the grasses growing in cities are natural- they were commercially seeded or planted. The trees were selected to match their leaf and flower color to the bricks of the nearby buildings and are planted x-feet apart. Trees are cut down so that complexes can be built and then named for the trees cut to make them: The Oaks, Maple Grove, Aspen Estates, Cedar Manor, Pine Village. Surprisingly enough, the trees that were planted in these compounds are not even in the same realm as the trees that were cut.

As I was taking a walk today I stopped to look at how little nature actually exists in my corner of the world. It's sad. My own front yard has been seeded so many times there are random patches of grass that don't match the grass beside it. I can't look at the stars from my porch swing because of the porch lights, and the over-glow shining across the block from the mini-mall. I'm ready to vacation in a cow-town so I fulfill my yearning for nature and rekindle my appreciation for the internet, 24-hour groceries, and paved roads.

Nature does not exist in Suburbia.