The approach into Atlanta seemed to take forever at an unusually low altitude. I don't know whether it was because we never got very high on the short hop to get there, or whether I just felt like time was slowed down as I rested my temple against the little plastic window and watched the ground go by. I couldn't help but compare the newer houses in freshly cleared developments to the older homes where the miles and miles of forest had begun to reclaim its hold on the land. There are an awful lot of great big houses on great big lots with flat, green grass and tiny or no trees, northeast of Atlanta. It's possible that because I was so high up, I couldn't distinguish very young trees, but it really looked like these developments were all about showing off how much land comes with a house that big. I can't say that I liked it all that much. I'm not anti-big house, in any real sense, and I don't have anything against lawns. I think healthy, green grass is quite lovely. But I can't stand empty yards with no trees, no flower beds, nothing to break them up and give the eye somewhere to land. I knew I didn't like it from ground level, house-hunting in neighborhoods with no life, no character, just cookie cutter boxes. Now I know it bothers me from the air as well.
Coming in from the east into Denver, there aren't as many neighborhoods to fly over. The heavy population centers are visible on the approach, but there is very little directly under the plane. I had hoped for a chance to compare with what I'd seen a few hours before, but it wasn't to be. I did get a sense of familiarity as we came up on the peculiar brown and deepest green that I associate with this part of the world. Ten years ago, after a long, white winter in North Dakota, I recognized how startling and hypnotic green can be, as I drove down to Oklahoma one March weekend. Years later, I visually feasted on greens, every time I left my miserably dry California home. Now I've gorged on it, spending three years in the verdant low country, and now sated, I am finally able to greet that brown landscape as an old friend. It got itself gussied up for my visit and everything, with bright yellow river birches running down every contour in the land, carved by rivulets heading downhill since long before anyone divided up the land into building sites.
My BFF picked me up from the airport, and took me to her home via her latest project. She is acquiring an apartment complex, built of brick in the 1960s, that has seen better days. But the buildings are solid, and the land is perched on an area primed for gentrification. We walked around the complex, and she pointed out some of the upgrades she plans to make right away, and some that will be coming in the years to come. Along with a new, more secure fence, code-compliant railings, and fresh asphalt in the parking lot, she has plans of transforming some empty, mulch-covered wasted space into a community garden. I can't think of any improvement that would have a bigger payoff for the heart of that complex. No home should be surrounded by flat, barren ground. Homes are defined by who and what lives there, and the greenery is a part of that equation. I'm so glad she recognizes that too.
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