Ugly and dreary

I don’t want to bash the place where I live. But I guess I’m going to do it anyway.

It seems so dreary here. In part that's because it’s winter again: almost 3 feet of snow over the weekend, in my backyard at least. The roads are dirty with salt and cinders. Trees are still without leaves.

But it’s more than that.

A few weeks ago, my first weekend back home, I drove down to Mansfield for a bike race. On the way there, driving down I-71, it occurred to me how unattractive things seemed. I passed the big outlet mall, the sprawling truck stops, junkyards you can see from the highway.

Mansfield was lots of concrete and ugly 50’s-style houses, with other areas of bulldozed farmland sprouting new “McMansions”. None of it was attractive.

Now there are certainly aspects of Germany that are dreary: the heavy industry in the Rurhgebiet north of Düsseldorf, open mines, graffiti in the city. But it never seemed very far to the next open space or town center with a pedestrian area. Even heavily populated areas were broken up by green space. This is something I miss about Germany, though I don’t miss the heavy traffic the goes along with the population.

It’s particularly disturbing how we seem to be paving over more and more green space in this area, despite an overall decline in population. People then wonder why there are problems with storm water runoff after heavy rain.

I’m sure the weather here is affecting how things seem right now. I’m hoping things will look different when the sun and green return. But even the sun and green won’t stop yet another redundant cluster of Home Depot-Petsmart-Bed, Bath, and Beyond from being built.