A Grand Opening
I want to follow up on an earlier (March 8, 2025) newsletter about helping NIMBYs see that change might have benefits. To remind everyone, that story was about a neighbor who was brought around by my suggestion that development might bring things she woul enjoy, like a bookstore.
And it did, though it took twenty years. The Wild Meadows Bookstore and Café had its grand opening on July 11 and 12. I could hardly weave my way through the lines of people waiting for pastries and the parents sitting on the floor reading to their kids. The owners plan to be open late three nights a week and serve a variety of snacks. Perhaps this is a “third place” in the making.
I don’t want to be an old curmudgeon preaching patience. But what else can I say? Our town began sprawling in the early 1960s. That way of building lasted 40 years. But somehow the sprawl led to a new vision.
We can come back to the dynamics of that evolution, if readers are interested. Here, I will only say that turning a vision into a neighborhood is a journey. It took the construction of 1,000 dwellings within walking distance, two hotels (one directly across the street), and some basic retail (a grocery a block away) for a bookstore to make sense. Oh, and don’t forget the installation of the public infrastructure supporting all that. When I think about how the town and developers changed a trajectory they had been on for four decades in less than two, and how the public came to support that, it doesn’t seem so slow.
Since I’m writing today, how about more Good News?
I recently saw stories about restoring the Canelo Hills ladies-tress (an orchid found in only two locations) to the desert wetlands of Arizona (1) and restoring the Delta smelt to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California (2). Farther east, I was happy to learn that the State of Vermont helps small logging operations protect water quality by providing low-cost crane mats (3). Finally, Lincoln County, NM is trying to limit future flood damage by buying floodplain homes and converting the river corridor to public land (4). It looks like even small, out-of-the-way places know that we are going to have to re-organize settlement patterns to account for climate change.
All who care are daunted by the Trump administration’s assault on the environment. But these little victories buoy me up. I hope they help you, too.
(1) High Country News (HCN) reported on the Canelo Hills orchid restoration on July 9, 2026.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/58-7/scientists-restore-an-endangered-orchid-to-arizonas-desert-wetland/
(2) And also on the Delta smelt in that same edition.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/58-7/can-restoration-save-the-delta-smelt/
(3) You can learn more about this water quality program from a May 19 edition of The Vermont Compass. Crane mats allow heavy equipment to traverse wet soils without extensive rutting that would accelerate sedimentation.
(4) And back to HCN: https://www.hcn.org/issues/58-6/lincoln-county-new-mexico-wants-to-turn-flood-prone-properties-into-public-land/
No AI was used in the production of this newsletter