The Wetlands

           The history of my neighborhood brings back the beauty of nature. Before the Damonte Foothills became the residential uproar that it is now (or used to be before the housing crisis), it used to be a wetland. Covered in marshes and filled with wildlife. Ranging from the aquatic creatures like fish and frogs to the little mammals that dwelled there, to the birds who floated on the watery land. Then there were the mustangs who roamed all over feeding on the grasses and drinking from the ponds all around along with the coyotes that came from out of the hills.

What a site it must have been. Natural, picturesque, free. No buildings, no houses, no construction, no garbage. There wasn’t any human interference. The mustangs weren’t forced to move upward towards the mountain sides. The coyotes weren’t kept from crying out their childish cheers. The wetlands weren’t cut down to the size they are now so that more houses could be developed.

It is hard to imagine this is how it used to be for decades until the Damonte Foothills came to be what they are now. Although there are still glimpses of what used to be, sections of wetlands still preserved, the remaining wildlife that lives on, the survival of nature, it is still difficult to register the true nature of the land with all that there is now: houses, the high school, tractors, trash that litters around construction sites. It is amazing to see what kind of influence we, as a society, have on the land that we call ours; how we are able to change the very makeup of nature by removing what used to be.

 

 

 

 

Here are two very different images of the Damonte Foothills. The first is more beautiful (in my opinion) and almost untouched by urbanism. The second is the modern view of the remaining wetlands with the housing development in the background.