Progress Doesn’T Have To Equal Destruction

I am not an old biddy, sitting in my rocking chair sucking my teeth and droning on about how things were just fine the way they were when I was young. I do not mind change and progress. I am flexible.

However, it does distress me when I look around our once lush, green, cool, and unhurried Spokane Valley and see what progress is doing.

In the 1970s, the Moody Blues sang of looking at progress but counting the cost. This refrain has been spinning in my head since last week when I happened by the intersection of Evergreen and Broadway.

I knew Evergreen Road was being widened, and I knew that trees would have to come down. But the sight of those ancient, gnarled roots reaching into the sky struck like a blow.

A trip down University Road was equally disheartening. Many big trees were down and pink surveyors stakes toll the death knell for many more.

Once these road-widening projects are finished, some of the people who live on University and Evergreen roads will have to be careful when they open their doors to get their Spokesman-Review in the morning. They could risk losing an arm to a passing car, so close are their houses going to be to the street.

The hills that surround us, creating our Valley, are becoming eyesores. Once heavy with green, trees on these hills are now as sparse and wispy as the hairs on an old man’s head.

Raw lots are liver spots on the hills’ exposed earth skin. Houses, all in shades of brown and gray with white or black trim, creep across the hillsides, looking like a malignant fungus.

If we get a big rain, I wonder: With no vegetation to hold back the dirt will those houses slide down into our yards?

East of Sullivan Road, Sprague Avenue peters out and becomes Appleway, a street named for the acres of orchards that used to cover the flat land in the eastern Valley.

There are but a few scattered remnants of those orchards left.

I know where one is and right now its twisted old branches are covered with a bubble-gum pink froth of blossoms. Bees buzz about and in the fall fragrant apples will ripen. I am not going to tell where it is, though, for fear someone might decide we need another strip mall or parking lot.

It seems that at the rate things are going there soon will be nothing here in the Valley but wide, busy streets, and businesses.

I fear that it will be like some areas of Seattle, where I always feel as if I am sitting still and a continuous loop is running past my car window. A 7-Eleven, followed by a Safeway, a car lot, a Circle K, an Albertsons, a Schucks Auto Supply, a MacDonalds, a ShopKo, a Chevron gas station … a 7-Eleven, a Safeway, a car lot and so on. It’s the same thing, over and over and over.

Progress does not always have to cause destruction.

Witness what is going on at the site of the old Argonne Village shopping center.

The bulk of the buildings were saved, the roofs being lifted up to accommodate new architecture. Out by the road, graceful curving, stone planters are in place, awaiting the greenery to come.

This is progress, but a rebuilding, rather than a ruining.

Some years back, the sewers came through my neighborhood. The original plan was to run the main line down Dalton Avenue, as that would cause less traffic disruption than tearing up either Liberty or Euclid, the main arterials through Millwood.

Thankfully, when it was discovered this would mean the loss of all the beautiful old trees that grow in islands down the middle of Dalton, the sewers were laid beneath Liberty instead.

Everybody sighed in relief.

Progress without destruction.

Hooray!

Progress cannot be stopped, for more people mean more services are needed.

Somehow, though, I would like to see less rampant destruction, lest the very kind of life we all moved to the Valley to enjoy be pulled from under our feet.