Your fear has built a wall between. Our lives and all what lovin' means ... You built your tower strong and tall. Can't you see it's got to fall someday.
-- Townes Van Zandt
Go back 37 years. I am living in a coastal Georgia town noted for its beaches, seafood and hospitality. The morning newspaper contained a headline that caught my attention: "County Commissioner Proposes Wall Around Entire County."
Later that day, I called a friend at the city and asked if this was a joke. "Oh no!" he replied "That commissioner brings that up every year. He thinks that there are too many outsiders moving here, it's not safe and we need to do something. I believe it's not a bad idea." I asked my friend what he proposed to do with the Interstate 95 traffic which ran smack dab in the middle of the county and presumably was the transportation of choice for those said outsiders. "Well, the sheriff says we have evidence of gang activity here in the county," he offered helpfully.
Go forward 37 years. I thought of my old Georgia home when reading a news story here in Northwest Arkansas last week. The city council of Cave Springs voted March 14 to unanimously freeze Mayor Travis Lee's initiative to connect the city to the Razorback Greenway. "They killed it last night. They canceled everything last night," Lee was quoted saying March 16 in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Opposition to the trail to the greenway has been a controversial issue in Cave Springs since August when residents of the Ridgewood subdivision -- advertised as one of Benton County's elite developments with "large wooded lots that feature a country feel, yet central to everything the area has to offer" -- learned a proposed trail route would run near the back of a portion of the development. Ridgewood has a privacy wall that runs along the south and west ends of the development, but it is not a gated community. The president of the Ridgewood Property Owners Association was quoted in that same story saying that people in other cities with starter homes would probably be glad to have the trail, but people who buy the kind of higher-priced homes in Ridgewood are not interested in having a trail come through their backyards and cause privacy and safety issues.
His logic seems to be, that when you are just starting out and theoretically don't own or have much, there is not much physically at risk, so issues like community spaces and pathways are actually desirable. However, once one has accumulated sufficient wealth and objects, then concerns over safety and protection take the forefront. Let's face it, the arguement goes, when you get expensive stuff, there are going to be people that might take it from you. The trouble with this approach is, that when you withdraw from the world in that fashion with walls, barriers and fences, and focus on privacy, community is sacrificed.
The Greek philosopher Plato used the allegory of living in a cave for protection and from fear, but shadows and sounds from outside the cave take on terrifying proportions the longer you stay in the cave ... until you finally never leave the cave again.
When a recent study was done on what people want for their community, a few universal needs seem to emerge: walkability, a combination of private space and readily available entertainment, face-to-face interaction with neighbors and -- more than anything -- a sense of belonging. In today's world, if you shut yourself off from people, then all that's left is a blinking screen.
The poet Henry Beston wrote in 1947: "Under today's disorders, there is something at work ... whose great importance has not yet been adequately realized -- the need ... for a community to live in and live with. The hope is vague, unsaid and unformulated, but the need is great, and there is something in our hearts which troubles us that we have lost what was once so beautifully called 'the commonwealth.'"
Let me end by saying, that currently, an addition to the greenway is being constructed within 50 yards of the back of my house. My wife and I walk a portion of the trail every day, usually making new friends -- some four-legged -- along the way. We can't wait.
NAN Our Town on 03/23/2017