It's all in the perspective

The Bluegrass region is one of the fastest growing in the state. New housing developments, and with them, new churches, schools, and shopping centers are popping up almost as fast as crab grass in the fescue.

The ride from home to work is for me along a winding, twisting expanse of road bordered with precariously balanced rock walls that, as legend has it, were built by slaves. Weathered fences, stark with ebony stain mark the boundaries of horse farms, and often mares and foals can be seen near the roadway, their coats gleaming in the sunrise.

In another part of town, rolling hills that stood as farmland for two hundred years--and wild pastures and forests for centuries prior--are now being combed and cultivated, neat rows of fences traded in for neat rows of streets and sidewalks and crisp new houses.

How one might feel about it depends on the perspective.

When I was a little girl, growing up in another part of the state, I was proud that, when I stood on a certain hill on a certain farm, I knew my grandfather owned the land as far as I could see. Mom would point out where Uncle Fate had his little cabin and would tell stories in his thick Scottish brogue. We could see the family cemetery where weather-worn tombstones marked where generation after generation had come to rest. We walked along paths where my great-great grandmother had gone before, tending her gardens. The thought of that sacred land becoming a subdivision makes me shudder. Hopefully it won't come to that. As someone once remarked, "that's the thing about land. They don't make it any more."

At the same time, the county where I grew up was itself growing by only small increments--Hardee's, then Wal-Mart, made the front page of the paper. Downtown waned and then was revitalized, but year by year, the younger folks flew from the nest and settled in other places. At the same time, the older folks were getting older, and young families found little to entice them to settle down there, which meant that a whole lot more people were moving out than moving in. Schools downsized and consolidated. Businesses closed. Churches struggled for members. If there were a sudden housing boom and a need for new houses, it would have bouyed the hopes of a lot of people. It would've been a really good sign that things were on the upswing.

Around here, the argument has been brewing for a while, and, I think will get worse before it gets better, if it ever does. Heritage vs. future? What kind of heritage, and what kind of future? Who knows. The answer is all in the perspective--where you're standing, where you're looking, and when.