The Droning Hum Heard for Miles

Keeping with the tradition of ending long spans of silence with old comics nobody cares about, here’s a another moldy one originally created for the now defenestrated Zoinks! magazine.

Yesterday’s walk was a good one. It found us leaving suburbia, and entering into the conservation area across the highway. It’s only a ten minute walk to the refuge. It’s a favourite place to visit in the summer. It’s relaxing, and the river is calming. I stick my feet in the water and I’m a kid again, catching frogs in the creek near the old train bridge on a scorching August afternoon.

It’s slowly being ruined by development, of course, and I’m sure one day from the swamp and small stand of trees will sprout multi-bedroom family homes, just as the rest of the farm land surrounding it has done. The street names will pay homage to the wildlife they’ve usurped, with labels like Oak Drive, and Cattail Crescent. These things will be nowhere in sight. Distant memories to so many birds that will have taken up new residence under eaves and in dryer vents. They all sound like cell phones now.

But it needs to be done, apparently. So we can achieve density. Then we can afford services. Then we can attract more people to our community, and build more densely, and pay for more services.

My main concern is this: the beauty of our country shouldn’t be something you have to drive an hour out of town to see. It should be right there all the time, a short walk away.