While I grew up in an area that is commonly referred to as suburban sprawl, I still have many memories of a place that didn’t feel that way. A large tract of land behind my neighborhood that consisted of relatively untouched piedmont forest. At the very front of this piece of land 
was the amenity center for the neighborhood; the pool, basketball and tennis courts, a large meadow and walking trails that snaked through the forest. It was a slight attempt by the builder to create a more natural type of amenity for the neighborhood at large but to my friends and I it was a playground. It was a community gathering place for the neighborhood as well as a place our parents could feel safe letting us roam free. It was just a short walk through the woods for us and easily accessible by everyone who lived throughout the neighborhood.
I have many memories of this place most notably was the constant flooding that seemed to be happening throughout the trails, courts and field. For awhile it seemed like every weekend there were neighborhood work parties where all the dads would go down to the woods and trails that ran throughout and dig trenches and ditches to mitigate the water that would collect on the concrete trail. While they worked to make the trails usable we would race our bikes around the loop happily speeding through the flooded sections to splash water everywhere. We would tear off into the woods and try and cross the creek that wound through the woods. We never realized that, if we followed along, it would e
ventually open up into the Chattahoochee River. To my friends and I it was just a fun place to play away from the watchful eyes of our parents. Years later I figured out that this big piece of land was actually a flood plain for the Chattahoochee which is why the builder wasn’t able to put any houses on it. Whether the trails and courts and homes were there or not the land would have been a moist swampy area. It was and still is a perfect refuge for the deer and other wildlife that lived there and the inability of the builder to construct anything on the land has preserved that habitat which may have otherwise been destroyed.