When I was a kid I could step out of my front door and see, in the distance, tree-covered hills. In the winter, with all the leaves gone, an old abandoned shack stood out. There was never any discernible change in it, but I liked the idea that it was steadily decaying, that, at some point in the future, the leaves would fall and reveal that the shack itself had fallen. Over each successive winter, I thought, I would see its gradual disappearance.
Unfortunately the whole area was bought by developers. The trees were razed, and cookie-cutter condos were put up in a few months. The loss of all that natural beauty still makes me sad, but it’s made even more poignant by the loss of that small shack, that one tiny stand of humanity gradually giving way to nature.
