Prompt Entry One

Neighborhood Environment

Growing up, my landscape was manmade. I walked on paved roads and sidewalks and rode my bike through my neighborhood whose main road was lined with crabapple trees, each equidistant from one another. In this environment, I never felt a lack of nature, finding it on occasion within a fixed landscape. I had not yet hiked in the mountains or kayaked in a Florida spring, activities that I love today. Only through reflecting back do I realize some of the few organic landmarks that punctuated my childhood. In spring or summer, I would climb in the crabapple trees, and in winter, “skate” in my boots along a semi-frozen creek behind my best friend’s house, risking a fall through the shallow ice-water if my boots cracked the surface like a spoon tapping on a crème brulee. For the most part, though, the landscape was all about neighborhoods, neighbors, and going to a store or restaurant for food. Because of this environment, I learned early the importance of community, and how our families and friends can mark the days and seasons as profoundly as the earth’s rotation on its axis or revolution around the sun.
My family was originally from Revere, a small town with a large Italian-American population, just a few miles north of Boston where the previous generation immigrated from Sicily and Avellino. When we moved to Maryland, my Aunt, Mother, and Grandmother packed up the culture from their hometown and unpacked it in the new neighborhood, where neighbors and friends would knock once, and enter into the back door which led to a seat at the kitchen table. Often, my grandmother was standing at the stove, stirring in a large pot with a faded wooden spoon. The house would fill with a pungent, fresh smell of tomatoes and penny royal simmering on the stove or fresh dough with egg yolks. Sometimes the kitchen table was covered with strips of drying fettuccine laid out on a white, cotton tablecloth or draped over the kitchen chairs. Visiting neighbors would use fold-out chairs that my Aunt stored against the family room wall to accommodate frequent guests.
One of my fondest memories was the drive into Baltimore with my Aunt to Trinacria’s Italian grocery store. From this monthly trip, we’d stock up on all things Italian: roasted red peppers, macaroni in various shapes, provolone and Romano cheeses, and olive oil. Most of our meals were at the kitchen table with the exception of getting dressed up to go into Baltimore or Washington, D.C. to an Italian Restaurant.
I was hardly aware of the natural world in Maryland because all things were about people, cooking and eating. I moved from Maryland to Florida when I was nineteen. I didn’t realize the importance of community and neighbors until it was stripped from me, and I was dropped into the Tampa area. Although I grew up going to stores and restaurants, something was missing in Florida, and all seemed shallow. Soon I despised the consumer culture, but this feeling changed when I moved to the country and became familiar with the natural Florida landscape. I learned to kayak in the clear, 72 degree springs of Northern Central Florida, and my children and I gardened and raised chickens while living out in the natural Florida landscape at the end of a dirt road. I became attuned to the rhythms of the day and seasons from raising chickens and roosters, gardening, and bird-watching.
I’ve never found or been able to recreate the community I experienced growing up. I’ve replaced this social environment, in one sense, with a connection to my natural environment. In my opinion, the most fulfilling way to live is to incorporate community with the natural environment.