I could have culture for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and yet the street I live on is lost in time. You cross a quaint stone bridge to two dead-end roads where the world stops. I'm a writer who needs cloistering, and the busiest this street gets is during a rare snowstorm, when a dozen children arrive with sleds. The neighborhood ecosystem includes wood rats, large black snakes and myriad birds and hardwoods taller than barns. A small town still, Chapel Hill offers the charm of a past era in a county that keeps pace with the times.
Development threatens to change our county.
Houses are being built quickly. Urban sprawl curls its tentacles along the highway corridors. People move here for the schools, the weather, the clean white-collar economy, all great reasons. But I came for the simple and beautiful way of life. I hope we hold onto it.