Suburbian Sprawl

     I grew up in Dacula, Georgia but nowadays I would be better off saying I’m “just a few minutes from the Mall of Georgia” or around “The Hamilton Mill area”. My home is in every way modern suburbia, but it was not always like that. Fifteen years ago when my family moved to Dacula it very much a rural place. Lots of open land, farms, and pockets of small towns. Nothing around but Fort Daniel Elementary School and a Winn Dixie. At the same time we moved in the Mall Of Georgia was being built. Once that opened up my home started to change. Businesses and neighborhoods popped up everywhere. As more families came the need for more space in schools came too. My 3^rd grade year a new elementary school opened and took half my friends with it. A few years later a new middle school and high school were built. Mill Creek High School (MCHS) was the largest high school in the Southeast for a few years. During my years at MCHS one new elementary school, a new middle school, and two new high schools were built in the area. So needless to say my home town exploded soon after I moved there.

     With that explosion came the different culture of suburbia. It was at war with the existing rural culture that felt threatened with all the change. My parents grew up in a rural area and naturally sided more with that way of thinking. I did not like the change because I kept losing friends to other schools. On top of that I grew up appreciating the outdoors that businesses were tearing down for new strip malls and fast food chains. Specifically there were a patch of woods with a lake across from our church I was quite fond of. On numerous occasions my Sunday school class had had weekend campouts there and guys I knew had spent hours on service projects building trails and an outdoor amphitheater. I had lots of good memories there and now it’s a Kroger. The people that moved in after lots of the construction love how there is just about every store or food chain you can imagine at your fingertips. But I miss the open outdoors, the small family run shop, and not having to spend ten minutes in traffic everywhere I go. Every time I go back home I encounter a new traffic light or a new bare spot where a forest once stood.

     I think growing up around all the change has made me appreciate old things. New stuff just feels invasive. Sure it might be easier to find things you need for sale and having a lot of restraint options is convenient but it does not bring me the joy that living in a small town brought me as a kid. I seem to reach out for these joys in other places. I probably enjoyed a program in the little town of Pine Mountain because it reminded me of how home used to me. It’s also most likely why I love being a camp counselor in the North Georgia Mountains and go to college in the small town of Dahlonega. The invasiveness of urbanization drove me to find its opposite. So I guess I’m a country boy that grew up in the suburbs longing for a return to the simple life.