Pigeons

I have to cheat, just this once.

I have to cheat because I’m pretty far from my weekly perch in Schenley Plaza. I’m 1,259 miles away, to be exact, and won’t be back until Tuesday. The sun is shining, the birds have beaten me here, and I’m sitting on the screened-in lanai of my parents’ house in Fort Myers, Florida, on a Friday morning in January. Through a sheen of queen palm and rosebush, there’s a narrow strip of backyard pushed up against a forest of cypress, pine, and fern. The palm fronds bounce against one another in the slight wind, creating a sort of crackling noise. A few egrets hop around on the brown forest floor while lawn mowers hum in the distance. South Florida has a distinct smell of humidity and plants. The air is light and soft and transforming—I felt it as soon as stepped off the plane at RSW.

My parents’ house is in Heritage Palms, one of thousands of subdivisions carved out of subtropical growth for retirees who spend their winters playing golf. I love this place, this house, and yet in many ways I feel guilty about it.

On my way down here, I was listening to JJ Grey, a Florida songwriter and environmentalist I’ve been following for a long time. He writes about the Florida landscape and the impact that subdivisions like this one have had on his home. One verse, specifically, sticks with me:

All we need is one more damn developer/

tearing her heart out

All we need is one more Mickey Mouse/

another golf course/

another country club/

another gated community

This song describes Heritage Palms exactly. While I stare at the forest in front of me, on the other side is a golf course. Up the street is a country club, and a six-foot wall surrounds the whole thing.

I’ve been thinking about Ashton Nichols and the concept of urbanature, and I can’t help but wonder whether this place meets the criteria. There are lizards crawling up the screen, alligators sunning themselves on stone laid for golf-cart bridges, and what sounds like an eagle shrieking somewhere deep within the trees. Nature is here.

And yet Florida has been gutted to build places like this. Not just out of human necessity, either. Hertiage Palms takes basic shelter a step further—private pools and putting greens, air conditioners and outdoor ceiling fans humming at top speed, massive SUVs in every other driveway (in case retirees encounter any unexpected terrain on their way to Walgreen’s).  Places like Heritage Palms are enclaves of privilege and indulgence—there’s even a gated community within this gated community, reserved for the double-plus rich, where the houses and pools and cars are twice the size.

It’s name? The Enclave.

And yet, sitting here with nothing to do but write and drink coffee and listen to birds, I understand why we build them.  They’re quiet. They’re seductive. They’re artificial and energy inefficient and (I'm just being honest here) they feel nearly perfect.

This is my view as I write this. Does this count as urbanatural? I don’t know. Should I feel guilty? I don’t know that, either. I didn’t build this place, didn’t ask for it to exist. But here I am, somewhere between nature and human extravagance, enjoying them both, and it’s hard to imagine appreciating one without the other.

It reminds me of a poem by David Berman about the inseparability of the two--or rather, the inevitable way that one finds the other. 

New York, New York

By David Berman

A second New York is being built
a little west of the old one.
Why another, no one asks,
just built it, and they do.

The city is still closed off
to all but the work crews
who claim it’s a perfect mirror image.

Truthfully, each man works on the replica
of the apartment building lives in,
adding new touches,
like cologne dispensers, rock gardens,
and doorknobs marked for the grand hotels.

Improvements here and there, done secretly
and off the books. None of the supervisors
notice or mind. Everyone’s in a wonderful mood,
joking, taking walks through the still streets
that the single reporter allowed inside has describes as

"unleavened with reminders of the old city’s complicated past,
but giving off some blue perfume from the early years on earth.”

The men grow to love the peaceful town.
It becomes more difficult to return home at night,

which sets the wives to worrying.
The yellow soups are cold, the sunsets quick.

The men take long breaks on the fire escapes,
waving across the quiet spaces to other workers
meditating on the perches.

Until one day…

The sky filled with charred clouds. 
Toolbelts rattle in the rising wind.

Something is wrong.

A foreman stands in the avenue
pointing binoculars at a massive gray mark
moving towards us in the eastern sky.

Several voices, What, What is it?

Pigeons, he yells through the wind.

***

That's all for now. Will post questions for next week's readers in a few days.

JJ Grey and Mofro--"Florida"