25 Years & Some Grassroots Power

I remember going to a friends house when I was a kid. They lived on the north edge of town, a little cabin in woods, and town seemed so far away. And driving south always felt like such a journey, past fields and forest to get to the river, often coming home in the dark with the stars out. Every direction away from town quickly became countryside and I began to know different pastures and nature areas as I grew up. 25 years later, in all of those directions, suburb after suburb fill those pastures, woods, and fields and the sight hits hard every time. In 2021, there was public outcry against a 120 housing development right next to the Gans Creek Wilderness Area. Wilderness Areas, designated specifically as an undeveloped preservation nature area, have to be a certain size with little or no human disturbance, so things like badgers and other human-sensitive creatures can attempt to survive. Most states do not have any Wilderness Areas; Missouri has 12. These are rare ecological sites and the people in my town quickly realized how little legal protection the Gans Creek area had against a proposal of development next to its parameter. I went to a city council meeting where person after person stood up and spoke about the importance of the area on a micro and macro scale and the plans were successfully, though barely, tabled. It is won for now and the group, saveganscreek.com, is working on getting better protection for the area. That experience of learning just how precious the area is and witnessing how others also weep over concrete, empowered me to go back to school in my thirties and study environmental science.