Colony Farm: eventually, all that will be left is regret

By Adam Fox
Western Herald

Several weeks ago, as dusk neared and a snowstorm began to bear down on Kalamazoo, I decided to take my dog Lucy out to the Asylum Lake Preserve off of Drake Road near the Parkview Campus. I often take Lucy for walks out to Asylum. She loves it and so do I. However, I especially like to go at dusk when there is impending inclement weather because typically we have the entire 274-acre parcel of land to ourselves.

By the time we arrived the sun had begun to set and the snow was building fast as it came down hard through the cold evening air. I trudged down the main entranceway path toward the forested area as Lucy bounded through the snow to my left, then right. Soon the snow was too much to bear and I was forced to pull my ski goggles down over my eyes to protect them until I reached the trees. It was peaceful in the quiet and the cold.

We traveled south through the forest toward Parkview Avenue and turned east when we came to the clearing, walking parallel with Parkview Avenue. We climbed up to what I can only describe as a ridge in the clearing and followed it north until the path veered back down into the wooded area to the east. We followed the path through the forest along the smaller lake connected to Asylum Lake as the moonlight lit the way.

Finally, we came to the bridge over the creek that connects the small and large lakes, there is a spot there where I often allow Lucy to drink from the creek because she is typically quite thirsty by that point and she has very easy access. However, I looked up over the creek to my right and was surprised to see a deer standing in the creek looking right back at me just 15 or 20 yards away.

I stared at the animal in awe quietly, and she was undisturbed. She continued to drink from the creek even as Lucy bounded around in the snow. Then, as I was turning to head back the way we came I saw a second deer walk down and join the first in the creek. Then a third, walking up the slope next to the creek on my left. I could not believe my eyes. I felt a slight chill run down my back.

Although I have seen plenty of wildlife out in Asylum, I had never seen a deer. I stood still and watched as they drank and then moved on slowly up the slope. I watched until they disappeared into the brush. A feeling I cannot explain had come over me as I whistled to Lucy and headed back down the path the way we had come.

We walked south all the way to the path that runs alongside Parkview Avenue and followed it back down to where it meets Drake, then we turned north and headed back toward where we parked. It was completely dark now and the snow and wind had picked back up. I pulled down my goggles and pulled a handkerchief that was tied around my neck up over my mouth and nose to protect me from the snow. Then I turned my head into the biting wind and looked up across Drake Road at the Colony Farm Orchard.

I had been, and continue to follow closely, what I foresee as the eventual destruction of the colony property for an expansion of Western Michigan University’s Business Technology and Research Park. I closed my eyes and pictured what it would be like to look across the road and see a line of buildings and pavement instead of trees.

I wondered to myself if anyone who is in charge of making the decision to develop the colony property had ever looked across Drake Road like I was that night. I wondered, if they had ever experienced the green space that people have fought so hard to preserve in the middle of Kalamazoo while construction takes place all around it.

I cannot stop the colony property from being developed, and I believe that the people who want to expand the BTR Park to that property have only good intentions.

And, once the colony property is developed, I will not be able to stop them from developing parts and eventually all of the Asylum property either, which will likely happen in the coming decades in the name of “jobs,” “recession,” “progress” or whatever other word you want. But I wondered that night if the people who will make those decisions, and are making them now, have ever stood with their dog and watched three deer drink from a stream just after dusk on a cold January evening in the middle of it all.

If they had I don’t think they would be so eager to develop the Colony property even if it was the cheapest way to do things and “in the best interest of the university.” I put that last part in quotes, because it is not in the best interest of the university, and I think it will be a decision that many will regret even if they cannot see it now.

Preserving green space like WMU has done with the Colony Farm and Asylum properties has a greater meaning than I think most people realize, and it is easy to lose track of that living in the present climate and having arguments swirl around through newspapers and televisions.

But would any of us today think that preserving Yellowstone National Park was a bad idea? I doubt it, yet a debate similar to the one going on in Kalamazoo occurred on a much larger stage when people wanted to preserve Yellowstone.

I’m not saying that the Colony Farm property is Yellowstone National Park, but it is not so much unlike it in that it represents part of what we have called land set aside for preservation. I think as a whole we would regret not preserving Yellowstone, just as I think we will come to regret developing the Colony Farm property.

Letting go and developing property like the Colony Farm is a slippery slope and I only wish that when politicians and administrators vote to start chopping down trees and pouring concrete they could summon up an image of three deer drinking from a stream in the middle of it all in their mind’s eye.

Adam Fox is a graduate student in the Psychology Department at WMU. He can be contacted via e-mail at adam.e.fox@wmich.edu.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=15453

Posted by kleonard on Mar 10 2010. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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