Fall in love

Today I decided to walk up to the lake with Cleo instead of walking down along the Mill Brook. To get to Lake Chickawaukee, you have to go along Lake Avenue, and then turn onto Route 17.

The minute I turn onto Lake Avenue, I can begin to hear the whine of wheels at 70 miles per hour. I think that's what folks hit on the straightaway, anyhow. I just see over the hill to 17, and I see a large pickup truck overtaking a line of cars, passing. There's a stoplight about a quarter of a mile ahead, and who knows how much gas got used for the operation, but, that's where it's at.

Some neighbors of ours are selling their house, and they have already moved out. It's a lovely old cape, but it looks forlorn with no people in it. It would make a wonderful home for a family, but I am not sure who is going to want to live with the constant roar of Route 17 next to them. It's worse than living right in town, I think, because the cars are going so much faster so their tires make more noise, and there are so many more trucks.

The rains have cleared out any humidity, and I can see the lake, sparkling ahead. The day camp kids haven't gotten there yet, and only a couple folks are there, communing with the morning. Cleo and I still have to walk the little stretch of 17 to get to the lake, however, and it's not a very pleasant task. Huge trucks go roaring by within a couple feet. You can feel their back draft push you a little. Ahead, someone is turning left, and a huge line of trucks and cars swings into the shoulder, where we happen to be walking. Realizing that none of them will notice us, and that we stand about as much chance as a porcupine or skunk, we step off into the brush. I look at the people going by. Several of them are on cell phones. I realize that I have a twelve year old son who has never been able to walk to a lake that is within a stone's throw from our home, because he very likely would eventually be hit and killed, considering the speeds of travel, without me walking with him.

We get to the lake, and a little respite from the proximity of the vehicles, anyway, though the constant roar is draining. I wonder how the people at the day camp manage to communicate with each other above it all. My little dog Cleo has never been in water before, and I wonder if there is a "no dogs" sign someplace, and I am now about to be in City Councilor Pergatory because I broke some ordinance or other by letting my dog dip her little feet into the lake, hop into the air with delight, race up the shore, and then race back into the water, tossing herself around with glee. She reminds me to laugh and be joyous when I feel that the problems of the human world are so large and so perplexing.

Some ducks are quacking, and there is a canoe out there, with its occupant standing, pushing the paddle like a pole. It's possible I could follow the little stream that leaves the lake into the marshes and brambles and undergrowth. I've done it many times: bush-wacking my way through muck and mire, often when Rory was little, and I would have to put him up on my shoulders to make the journey. Once I lost a pair of shoes and had to dig them out of the mud. I'm in love with the Mill Brook, and Lindsay Brook, just as much as any woman could fall in love with anything or anyone, and in some ways, sometimes I think it's more useful to love a living, breathing body of water than hold on to some ephemeral fleeting concept of what I think I might get out of chasing around some man. Cute at first, but then I end up angry with him for leaving his laundry in a pile.

Probably I am out here on this little stream so that I can remember that the vagaries of our human anger with one another are as fleeting as our lives and the love we share, but the little rivers and streams hopefully will roll along regardless, unaware of my snitty moment, uncaring about my laundry martyrdom. Hopefully the streams will carry on way longer than us, that is, if we don't manage to destroy and pollute them first.

Cultures older than ours have thought of geographic features on the face of the earth as living, breathing creatures. Entities, in municipal-speak. Something that is not a "thing", and is alive. For how can you harm another living being? Perhaps you can: perhaps you don't care about the legions of snails, crossing Lake Avenue as we wend our way home, about to be helplessly squashed by car tires. But if you thought of Lindsay Brook as a meandering, pleasant young person named Lindsay, eagerly trickling to the harbor in order to go spend a sunny afternoon searching along the shore for sea glass, would you have as easy a time of using her as a conduit for your polluted storm water runoff? Or would you do everything in your power to control and contain storm water runoff from asphalt parking lots and roads? Could you continue to think of her as a "storm sewer"?

I hope not. Before we went out for our walk, Cleo cuddled down at my feet and I read the latest issue of a trade magazine dealing with green innovations in public works and storm water management. Perhaps you are familiar with the new grassy parking areas at the Wastewater Treatment Facility, and Sandy Beach. These parking areas are made of interlocking reinforcing sections beneath the grass that contain gravel, and the grass, so that one can park a car on them and it will not rut up the grass. The method of permeable parking, instead of impermeable asphalt paving, is growing in popularity in urban centers as a way to contain the costs to public works and waste water plants, and to alleviate environmental damage due to erosion and pollution.

In our own city, nearly sixty five percent of the waste water that goes to the treatment plant is storm water runoff. This water has to be treated using your sewer fee dollars, and is discharged into the harbor rather than returned to the fresh water water shed. Not only are we losing the water, but it is being output into the salt water harbor, which is akin to pollution since salt water doesn't want too much fresh water added to it.

Anything that we can do to absorb storm water, through grassy parking areas, tree buckets that absorb rainwater and thereby provide water to street trees, rain gardens in the middle of parking lots that absorb parking lot runoff, planting trees and planting gardens, will cut your costs that you have to pay in your sewer bill, and will protect our fragile streams and lakes, and our fresh water supply. In addition, these efforts create a green, pleasant city that people want to live in and visit.

To that end, I asked the Comprehensive Planning Commission to please add a design standard in the new Neighborhood Business Zone encouraging developers to use permeable alternatives to asphalt paving.

And also to that end, I ask you to go outside and attach yourself to the nearest body of fresh water. It's closer than you think. Trace Lindsay Brook through its tributaries. Go on a voyage like you used to do when you were a little kid, get a stick, and hop around on the rocks. Take a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and lose your sneaker in the mud. I ask you to consider opening up our streams, rather than hiding them in culverts and placing them under asphalt paving. Consider falling in love this morning.