This is a pretty old story. We've all heard it enough times, but it keeps getting told.
I think that if there is one trick our fuzzy neighbor to the south has taught us so far, it's that one of the tricks for making people accept something horrible is to do it often and without shame.These pictures work their way in from the edge to about a kilometer and a half into a section of woods not far from my home. The sunnier photographs are from March break 2001, while the overcast winter pics are from last week. I'm alternating between a photo of one spot from about six and a half years ago, then showing roughly the same location as it is now.
I can barely walk five feet through here without tripping over a flashback to some important - or at least nostalgia inducing - moment from my life. The only area comparable to this part of Carp would be downtown Ottawa, in that both are densely laden with Firsts, Passion Plays, Unsolved Mysteries and other Memorables.
This has served as my little escape from the world, when I've needed one.
But a tedious, tedious story has begun to play out. The forest is being cleared for new housing, the likes of which tend to take their street and neighborhood names from the very terrain they are obliterating.
Naturally there is a part of me which is furious, disappointed, disheartened and all the rest. There is also the part of me which knows that the owners of the land can either sit on it, making nothing, or sell it and make a very handsome retirement fund for themselves. Then my sense of taste is just outright offended by the style and size of homes being built, including how little they resemble anything else in the community, but that is
very peripheral.
Anyways.
Eventually I'd come across a mound of earth which prods into the underbelly of a small lake and this is where Things would generally happen. On my own, I'd usually stop here to write or just close my eyes and clear my head. With others, a number of things might happen but the safe bet would be a good ol' bush party. In Carp, until you got your drivers license, your primary gateway to Adult Thrills would generally come via a bush party. A small circle of rocks sat there and was used for fires done up by
tweens and teens for many a year.
But it's recently gotten a lot less inviting.
Yeah, private property and all that! I know! But dang if it isn't an unpleasant thing to see after being freely allowed to romp around this area all your life. It feels a bit childish of me to get uptight about seeing a polite, lurid, orange "Fuck off, unless you've got cash in exchange for planning rights" spray painted over somewhere you remember being led by your kindergarten teacher, along with all the other little ducklings, to see a beaver lodge. This isn't just where I discovered the folly of alcohol from that guy's dad's poorly locked liquor cabinet or how girls can be good for more than throwing snowballs at, it's where I made some of my earliest connections with nature - "Nature" being the primary element composing "The Earth".
Yeah, it's fair to say that I'm being a little wrought up about this and that my personal perspective heavily influences how I feel about these changes. In this one post, I'm not even going to pretend to be objective. Once in a while, it's okay to emote - so long as you don't try to present it as something else. I am not Michael Moore, this is not the Charlton Heston segment of Bowling for Columbine.
So that's that, then. I promised I'd show Carp and this is part of it. I feel that eventually I shall come back to take more pictures of Carp, but it won't
be Carp anymore. It will be Stittsville or Kanata. It will be the new place that people want to move further away from, so as to live in "the country".
I honestly try not to romanticize these woods, this village or it's inhabitants - the same way I try not to romanticize anything else, as doing so is a luxurious indulgence which obliterates objectivity and rational thought. This makes me sound like a goddamn Vulcan, but I'm just a guy who values seeing things clearly. But I can't see this sort of thing clearly through
all the tears.
Ha!
Got you!
You thought this was going to get all stupid and weepy. No, no. I used to feel that way about the development in Carp and I still don't like it...but I find that I've reached an age and a certain level of knowledge where it becomes absurd to look at things in such a maudlin fashion. I'm still for denser, better planned development. I'm just no longer able to sustain the kind of intense angst and frustration which this shit used to provoke in me - I think the angst gland starts to shrivel on your twentieth birthday and is eventually passed like a kidney stone.
The fact of the matter is that I'm now seeing my frustrations with this shit with almost the same sense of temporal detachment that I see "all them memories" etc. Not being able to blind myself to other sides of the issue, I can't maintain the kind of tunnel vision required to be vehemently against or in favor. I do know that I wish the development was being done
differently and for
less assinine reasons, but I can no longer shake my fist at The Bastards and spit.
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