Countryside and Sprawl

For fall break, I visited my roommate’s lake house at Lake Horton and greatly enjoyed my experience. I chowed down on frog legs, rode fore wheelers, and went skeet shooting. I loved how vast and green everything was and how animals can be seen running around everywhere. All the room I had to run around in was very liberating. Breathing in the fresh air of the rural countryside and seeing how everyone interacted were definitely rewarding as well. The whole culture there was different than in the city since people make their livings so differently and spend their free time doing different things.

During class, we mainly discuss suburban sprawl and traditional neighborhood, but we rarely discuss the more rural areas until this past Wednesday. The video in class demonstrated how sprawl destroys areas that could be left rural. Although the video was mainly just visual with music, the words written and pictures definitely portrayed that replacing rural areas with sprawl is another negative aspect of sprawl. Instead of fitting everything into walking distance like a traditional neighborhood does, sprawl spreads everything out destroying more land than necessary. After this weekend, I appreciate rural landscape even more and I would love it if it were better preserved.
Molly Waller