Both of the streets that branch off of my street (Aldrich Street) are all products of deforestation—Willow Lane and Jason’s Way—and if you walk them up and down you will see dozens of new homes that all have similar features, you will see their large above ground pools that appear out of place in contrast to the forests around them that were spared, you will see how most of the houses all have multiple cars lining their driveways, as if their garages are insufficient in size, you will see fathers teaching their children new sports as they grow up to be just like them, you will see neighbors competing with each other every weekend to try to perfect their lawns to show off their property, you will see that sometimes their best is not that good and they fail to cut all areas or pour an insufficient amount of the most potent fertilizer ever produced, you will see the homes of state troopers who are unofficially the guardians of the our little community but do not do anything extra to help their neighbors who silently struggle with their marriages and mental health, you will see the cell phone tower that the unscrupulous Verizon Wireless company erected despite immense pressure from members of our neighborhood to stop corporate greed, you will most definitely see my mother who led the movement against the tower stare defiantly at its starkness past the stumps of trees that were sacrificed so that we could be exposed to RF radiation just to have a slightly (if at all) better cell signal, you will see the rickety one lane bridge that all cars on my street drive over without slowing down that has caused countless accidents over the years, you will see homes with “for sale” signs that are only up for a week because of the prime real estate they occupy, you will see an entrance to a mountain bike trail that my dad built that connects to a fifteen mile network of trails also made by him, you will see that the end of my street has become a dead end because there is a permanent pond that was created by beavers decades ago and has completely flooded the road, and finally, you will see me roaming my neighborhood when I have nothing better to do but to observe and remember how my street used to be the only one before acre after acre of wilderness was cleared to maximize profits from the land while housing nuclear families, and I constantly ask myself as I gaze at the flooded portion of my street that I have always loved: how powerful is nature in comparison to humans?