Friday, July 01, 2011

Lehigh Acres, Florida, Part II

I'm encouraged by what I've seen in Lehigh Acres, not by man's action toward the landscape, but the action of nature reclaiming the space. If you haven't read The World Without Us, I highly recommend it. In the book, Alan Weisman talks about places that have been abandoned by man, and now we can very carefully observe what it looks like when nature reclaims an area. This space around Lehigh Acres is, I think, another of of those spaces that could have been illustrated in the book. Cracks form in the asphalt, grass and weeds get the in crack, push them apart further, and the process repeats itself. Vines grow over the asphalt, hiding it from view and creating what looks like long stripes of fields while the grasses and weeds slowly crumble the asphalt. Ever slowly, the roads are being erased, regardless of what Google shows.

Maybe one day these roads will be gone, and this will go back to being forest.





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As we would expect, out of the way cul-de-sacs become dumping grounds.


Now here's something I never thought I would encounter: seemingly abandoned bee hives, the kind used to pollinate plants. Some of the are still populated by bees, but why are they there? They're no where near any groves or fields.

Even bees can't get a break. I guess the keeper thought this was enough of an out of the way place to leave the bees.





 

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