16 December 2007

How Un-Green Was My Valley?

My 6:00 AM, next-to-last 2007 chat with Doug, my downtown farmers market quince guy, was dismal for reasons completely unassociated with the cold rain or the price for which he will dump end-of-season apples, but the sale of his next-door neighbor's 150-acre, Gettysburg-area fruit farm. Houses will be planted - $600,000+ houses, which the developer predicts will be bought by people working in Maryland, D.C., and Virginia. For two years, Doug, who previously had never even attended a simple community meeting, led the charge to derail the sale, armed with what he hoped was a zoning technicality. The only victory realized, however, was getting the density decreased from one house per acre to one house per three acres. Broken friendships and bad feeling were left in the wake, but that will be the least of it once the destruction of the orchard and this rural area commences.

So it was ironic that I arrived home to the front page Baltimore Sun article about the dwindling of Maryland scenic byways. Recent rare ventures beyond Baltimore City limits have taken me to areas I assumed were somehow protected and would always remain pristine, shocking me with vista after vista sullied with inappropriate, poorly designed, cheaply constructed, non-contextual cardboard crap. On these journeys north, I encounter very early to mid-morning unbroken lines of traffic resembling nothing short of a mass evacuation into Baltimore City.

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