I screamed in absolute rage and dismay the other day. I had come to an intersection that I used to drive through frequently until I moved. The street T'd at 104th, a major east-west street. Turn left and the view is open all the way to the Indian Peaks along the Continental Divide. More than a year ago, the fields laying across the hillside between 104th and a winding secondary street were broken only by a couple of golf course links and some agricultural fields.
Not any more. Bulldozers and earth-movers are caressing a chunk next to 104th and on the other side of a drainage swale which leads to a small pond, a half dozen mega-houses are marching along the new street overlooking the pond, with more just waiting to be built. There is still a piece of field along 104th covered only with tilled soil, but I imagine that it won't be more than another summer before that, too, raises more mega-houses squeezed in between the drainage, the golf course links and 104th. Then the breadth of expansive mountain view will be serrated by all those ugly dormers.
Remember that small pond? Margaret's Pond, it is called, with a path constructed around it, just as I suspect the pond itself was constructed when the winding secondary street was built to service this "up-scale" future development. Margaret's Pond and its path are official "open space" protected by the City of Westminster. And it soon will be a hiccup in the surrounding landscape of those up-scale houses. (Can you tell that I am waiting for the stock market to totally correct itself and wipe out the capability of developers to build these and the ability of all but the protected rich to buy them? Actually, I am hoping the limited supply of water available to the Front Range will finally be taken into consideration.)
I know I rant on this every so often, but at times I am afraid that the massive construction here will simply blunt my caring to a point beyond hope. To be honest, I feel this area is already beyond hope. If ever a square foot of ground was a commodity, it is here in the lovely (choke) cities surrounding Denver, Colorado.
Perhaps the contrast was felt so strongly because I had just read the Vermont Land Trust's recent annual report, and the stories and the photographs highlighted the heart-wrenching difference in feelings for land between Vermont and this Front Range area of Colorado.
In the meantime, commodified square feet of ground are being fought over in the middle East, and elsewhere. Pray that every person who has hate and war in their hearts feels a breath of compassion passing through and takes the love they feel for somebody (most people do indeed love somebody) and experiments with feeling love for someone they hate. If not love, then at least some compassion…some recognition that these "others" are also human, and subject to the same frailties of passion and hope.