The fading fields

By: 
Leslie Silverman
I drove down Old Hill City Road the other day. It’s not my normal route, so it surprised me to see how far along the new houses being built are. We all know where I’m talking about. 
The lots that were priced so high no one could imagine anyone would buy one. Yet there it is, the first house, nearly finished. My eyes welled up with tears at its sight. I’m not being overdramatic. It’s true. I felt intense sadness at the field and the view, which used to be just pristine and untouched. Soon it will be a home for people, and home for several homes. It will never again be just a wild field with a stunning view. And this is not the only place that I see this.
I drive through Rockerville pretty often. I remember when it was a ghost town, a place no one really went to, unless of course, you were going to eat at the Gaslight. If you haven’t been through there in some time you don’t see the leveled lots, the power lines that have been dug, the tearing down of trees. I’m told that the site will soon have 25 fourplexes on it. That’s 100 dwellings. That could be potentially more people than in all of Keystone. It breaks my heart.
The Black Hills have been discovered. And with that, we are a place everyone seemingly wants to move to. Yet Census numbers for both Hill City and Keystone show a decline in population. Will many of our new residents be full time? Or will they make their home elsewhere during the winter? Will there be more kids in our schools, more shoppers in our market, more traffic on our roads? Or will there just be more tourists, escaping their own full time homes that are bustling with people and sprall?
The town I grew up in is unrecognizable to me. My childhood home was razed years ago. A mcmansion overtakes the lot. My favorite pine tree that I used to play with my stuffed animals under is gone. The grape vines my siblings and I used to pick grapes from are no longer there. Down the hill my childhood park is still present, but the slide I fell off (I had my first set of stitches due to that fall) is gone. The monkey bars Missy and I hung out on as teenagers, blasting “Us and Them” while we dreamed about being grownups has been replaced. The woods behind the park are now home to one of the largest homes I’ve ever seen, complete with a gate that must be at least 12 feet high. It’s a dramatic juxtaposition to my first boyfriend’s 1950s ranch house which sits kitty corner to it.
I can vividly remember the day Missy and I walked down Route 9 (the same highway 9 Bruce Springsteen sang about). The road was becoming two lanes each way and had not yet opened. This highway would replace our local back road and a sea of strip malls now line its banks. 
I guess I wish things didn’t have to change. At least not so much. I know it’s unrealistic to think of buying a lot in the Hills and just preserving it. I am sure my neighbors wished I hadn’t built on the vacant lot I bought, ruining their pristine view of the rock wall at the back of my lot. So I’d be hypocritical to ask anyone to do what I didn’t. 
Yet, somehow I want things to remain. My hometown, which used to have pine trees everywhere, has storefronts, houses, strip malls and the like on virtually every lot possible. Trees were hauled out and roads and subdivisions put in. 
The opportunities for economic advancement, for more diversity, maybe even for a population base that could support a Costco or a Trader Joes are the “rewards” we get for the changing landscape. We take away the homes of so many—deer, turkeys, birds.  Don’t their homes count?  We exchange clean air and water, solitude and peace.  We seem to build endlessly while older stores, like a decrepit Safeway and a no longer open Shopko sit idle.
And once it’s built, it’s never the same. 
The people come, the fresh air recedes. The water gets murkier.
The trees don’t get replanted. The views don’t come back. The buildings remain.  
I wonder how many of you yearn, like I do, for the way it was. For the field that was just a field.

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