Our local community college just built a satellite campus on the road I travel to and from work every day. It’s quite impressive, and I’m hopeful that it will draw people from my nearby school community. While it always bothers me when large areas of forest and foliage are plowed under, I understand that some development necessitates tree removal and earth moving. I thought the contractors on this job were exercising some restraint in this department, because they left a long row of Jack pines and dogwoods and other small scrub trees along the border of the campus. But last Friday on my way home from work, there were the bulldozers, plowing over all those trees and churning up the red-orange clay dirt North Carolina is known for. Today on my to work there was a row of maples, Bradford pear trees, and what looked like boxwoods lined up on the bare orange ground waiting to be planted.
When did it become easier to tear something down and start from scratch than to care for what already exists? I’m glad it’s not so easy to do this with people, for I’m certain the bulldozers would have already come for me.
one small corner of the universe 