Out in the Country

Lately I’ve been slipping song lyrics into my blog entries to set the tone or to share something that is personally meaningful to me. As I started to write about the walking/biking paths that snake throughout the villages of Celebration, one of my favorite songs came to mind:

Whenever I need to leave it all behind
Or feel the need to get away
I find a quiet place, far from the human race
Out in the country.

Before the breathing air is gone
Before the sun is just a bright spot in the night time
Out where the rivers like to run
I stand alone
And take back something worth remembering.

Whenever I feel them closing in on me
Or need a bit of room to move
When life becomes too fast, I find relief at last
Out in the country.

Before the breathing air is gone
Before the sun is just a bright spot in the night time
Out where the rivers like to run
I stand alone
And take back something worth remembering.

Out in the Country
Performed by Three Dog Night

It might seem odd to relate a song about the country, solitude, and running rivers to a place like Celebration. After all, we’ve a brand new development smack dab in the middle of one of the world’s biggest tourist meccas. One of our basic tenets is small yards and close-together homes. Like most Celebration residents, I can literally reach out my window and touch the neighbor’s home next door. It’s not the kind of area where you typically think about having “room to move” in a “quiet place far from the human race.”

But believe it or not, we’ve got lots of green oases where you can escape for a few precious minutes, or even hours. There are miles of interconnected pathways in virtually every area (North Village is the exception). These man-made boardwalks twist and turn through forested areas, and the buffer zone of green cocoons you and transports you to what feels like a million miles away from civilization.

To be sure, not all of the paths are like that. The one that leads from East Village to downtown by way of Lake Evalyn is very “civilized.” It starts near our neighborhood swimming pool, and although it has swampland along one side, the lake on the other is bordered completely by homes. Still, the area is rich with bird life, and it’s not unusual to see a gator doing its best to trick potential food into think that it’s simply an innocent and harmless floating log. If you venture out at night, the “song” of the swamp dwelling critters is downright eerie, sounding almost like the chant of human voices.

As you cross over into the Lake Evalyn stretch, the minor sense of isolation disappears. Unlike the first lake, this one is generally devoid of much wildlife, unless you count the family of ducks that make their home on its shore and beg for handouts from passersby. While you’re often the only person on the East Village leg of the path, the population grows denser as you get closer to town. Tourists on foot rarely make it all the way to the end of the path, but you’ll run into plenty of them gawking around Lake Evalyn. They love to walk four or five people abreast, and when they see a bicycle coming, they have the universal Bambi-meets-car response: Freeze in your tracks and turn a blank, uncomprehending stare towards the oncoming vehicle.

Because of the people density, this path isn’t the best one for relaxation and escape. But it’s very handy when a big, traffic-drawing event is going on downtown. For example, on the Fourth of July, only a certifiably insane person would drive. By the time they would find a parking spot, it would probably be August anyway. Instead, many of us in East Village simply take the 20 minute stroll. It’s pleasant stroll, and makes us feel less guilty about the sugary, starchy snacks and sangria that we’ll inevitably consume at the food booths.

You can actually follow this path all the way around the downtown lake, past Lakeside Park, and to the Mirasol apartment complex, but I rarely go that far. Once you get past the Celebration Hotel, the people density increases tenfold. If you’re on a bike, you spend more time dodging pedestrians than making actual forward progress. Even when I’m walking, I prefer taking Front Street because I’m usually heading for a downtown shop or restaurant.

For solitude, I prefer the path that starts at the entrance of Artisan Park and runs all the way to Celebration Boulevard, near the high school. Often, it is deserted, and much of it runs through densely wooded areas. You’ve got a canopy of green above you, filtering dapples of sunlight, and swampland below the raised boardwalk. Even though civilization is mere minutes away, you can lose yourself in a fantasy of isolation. It makes me feel like a character in Ray Bradbury’s classic short story, “A Sound of Thunder.” People visited the forests of pre-historic Earth to observe dinosaurs in their natural habitat. They had to stick to a hovering walkway, much like the elevated paths in Celebration, to avoid affecting the environment and potentially causing a change that would have a catastrophic ripple effect over millions of years.

I don’t think interacting with the native flora and fauna would have a lasting impact on time and space (although I suppose it could impact your future pretty profoundly if you bothered a ‘gator or a poisonous snake), but I feel the sense of isolation and being in another world. Not so long ago, all of Celebration was native swampland. If you open your mind and imagination, you can still recall that time. It brings a sense of peace, of being at one with the life all around you. There are no worries, no pressures, just a sense of being.

The only thing to beware of on this path, particularly on a bicycle, is the sudden, unexpected twists and turns. I guess they would be more like zigs and zags, since they are squared. Whatever you call them, they will remind you of the road signs in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."

I also enjoy walking or biking on the path that borders Aquila Reserve. I still remember the days when that area was an untouched forest. Even though I know that the exact same thing happened in East Village, and all the rest of Celebration, it made me sad to actually witness it in person. My earliest memory of East Village is of a vast, barren sandlot. I’m sure lots of old growth and tall, majestic trees were flattened to make way for my homestead, but they were gone by the time I selected my lot. I saw what Aquila and Artisan Park originally looked like, so it made more of an impact to actually see the destruction of the native land to make way for the construction.

But remnants of nature still remain, as I am reminded when the clip-clop of hoofbeats startles me on the Aquila path as a herd of deer bounds in front of me. I see the majestic birds that have stuck around through all the building, and the ‘gator eyes and nostrils poking just above the water’s surface remind me that the “Living With Alligators” paper I signed wasn’t a joke.

The homes across the street from mine back onto preserve land, so even though my house is not right by the walking path, nature occasionally comes to me. We have wild turkeys who still come to visit like they did when we used to come to see the progress of our home’s construction, and one night I had to quickly slam on the breaks as suicidal deer dashed in front of my car just as I turned onto my cul de sac.

But the most serene and peaceful moments can be found on the walking paths, as you need to be farther away from civilization and out among the trees and wetlands to really get that sense of being “out in the country.” You don’t even have to go on one of the main paths to get it. Short paths are strategically placed through many of the smaller wetland areas. You can step off the street and into the solitude of nature in only a moment or two. The subdivision sounds are buffered and your view of the houses and cars is blocked. You can take a few deep breathes, relax, and get yourself centered. Then, a moment later, you’re back from the “country” and in the real world again. Hopefully, in the words of Three Dog Night, you’ve brought back something worth remembering.

Feel free to email me with any questions or comments at celebration@mailblocks.com

My Celebration website can be found at www.celebrationinfo.com