Landoun County

See what I did there? Landoun County? Loudoun County? Dumb. But it's all about the land in Loudoun.

The countryside of hills tumble down from the Blue Ridge Mountains into a valley that plateaus into the encroaching DC area. These hills, populated by deer, coons, squirrels, and musk-oxen (in my head) became at some point 30 or so years ago the prime spot to be and live and commute into DC, to basically have your cake and feast on it too. It's pretty much exactly what my parents did when they moved out from Arlington to ye olde Waterford. I imagine the commute, although long back then as well, was hardly the pavement glacier it is now. Basically everything from Leesburg on out along Route 7 was rural, unfettered goodness. But people started to have the same idea as they got tired of the less than sparkly Arlington landscape (at the time). And the bulldozers started showing up and carving out little American dreams here and there for everyone with a checkbook and a taste for meadows of fireflies and babbling brooks of golden fairies. It was a grand time I'm sure for all involved.

Then after a decade or so, maybe sooner, I'm sure it became apparent to those who had already found their patio, grill, and gardens. With more people taking the land everyone came to look at, you're just looking into Joe J. Commuter's backyard and his jerkwad kids making fun of each other. But it didn't stop. More gold rushers showed up, building this time crummier houses at cheaper prices in less identifiable places (like along highways in between towns cuz there wuz space there), and caring less about what it all looked and felt like.

"No worries," they said, "We'll build a McDonald's. And we'll build a Wal-Mart. And what about an Outlet Mall! And a Target and a Kohl's and a Party City and a PetsMart and a Pizza Hut and a Home Depot and a Lowe's and a Giant and a Shoppers Food Warehouse and a Burlington Coat Factory and a Steinmart(!) and a bigger Mall and a HUGE Car Wash that's real fancy!"

But how to get to all these pods of food and stuff and shit?

"Make Route 7 bigger! Make it go around Leesburg, build a sweeping overpass over it all, put in stoplights and widen the fucking roads so we can go faster and fit more!"

What about the people that can't afford to own cars?

"LOLWUT! Fuck 'em! Everyone can afford a car, this is America! And if they still can't, push them toward the slummier parts of Leesburg (or the slummier parts somewhere out of the county altogether) so they can at least run across highways to get food and supplies and even skip across six lanes to the DMV to wait for hours to apply for a license to use on a car they might afford in twenty years. Careful on your way back across the road boys!"

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Loudoun continued to blossom and shove its bulbous head into the DC area's radar. 57,000 in 1980 turned to 140,000 by the 2000s, and the population as a whole demanded its water, electricity, and ROADS. The great highway to rule them all, the Greenway was built and then jacked up its price; so to avoid the hell of stoplights n' traffic on 7, you gave away your two first born to ride the luxurious Greenway (because of all those forests you get to see just beyond the 8 lane highway's edges). More and more, the landscape would blink and open its eyes to a new parking lot for a Wegman's, a parking lot for a Costco, a parking lot for a Parking lot.

It's not that these places themselves don't offer some good old fashioned shit, or that these houses don't house wonderful people (some of them). It's that the collective effect of this smorgasbord all adds up to no one really giving a crap about what it was all about in the first place. The land.

In the first place, it wasn't just land to have and take a dump on. But now, all that dumped-on, cemented/pavemented land is now is a spitting image of Iowa suburbs, upstate New York suburbs, Texas suburbs, sun-cooked Arizona suburbs, and so on. It's a portal to another homogenized place around the country that no one really cares to remember the name of, to recognize where the place stops or begins, to identify with anyone or anything.

But there are still parts of these places, and of Loudoun, that aren't baking asphalt. There are towns and family-owned shops and actual communities living together collectively. And even for the outliers, there are houses at the end of long drive ways that care to embrace the hillside rather than subdivide it into cardboard fortresses. There are people worth more than their cars, mortgages, and kids' college funds.

You just have to keep driving west. Drive west and driving no longer becomes a chore or an eternity of hating other people through glass, it becomes a joyride, an exploration, a goddamn thrill, jumping around curves over fields through forests and along rivers. And then you get out and you're alive in the world not dead in man-made facelessness.

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Loudoun County was the richest county in the United States in 2008. It dropped since then. Forbes says it's now second place, to its easterly neighbor Falls Church. The 2011 median income of Loudoun? $112,021. Shit son. And what does it have to show for itself?

For some, it's just a lot of a lot of nice cars, jumbo houses, and backyards that if you even peek at, the nervous suburbanites will call the cop who sits two feet away in cul-de-sac #3582 just for that purpose. "No looking at the rich people; they feel threatened." Basically, they have a lot of things. Things they can compare to each other's things, things they can salivate and slob over, things they can jerk off to and go to sleep hugging between their arms and legs. Cool story bro. Things are cool. I like things too. You can get what you want if you want (and have the means). I ain't stopping you. But if that's all there is, then fuck man, fook.

But for others, they have land (and things), or they have a little land that just hasn't been shat on (and things). Again, the land isn't all gone yet. You look around and you're in one of the most beautiful places you'll find. That's the other side of the county (west!); people own acres and acres of land to represent such a steep and stupidly high minimum income. It all comes at a high price, but if there's so much goddamn money in the county, why not enjoy your things and your land too (please no more Party Citys). Hey, you earned it, or at least inherited it.

Where does that leave us? With a lot of people who don't care, some that do but don't really, and others that really do care. And you end up with burgeoning towns-turned-blacktops with highway tentacles (Leesburg), other towns that aren't towns but a collections of houses and shopping centers and parking lots gathered in the vicinity of a sign stuck between manicured bushes and five USA flags (Ashburn), towns that are quickly slipping into an abyss of shit from something that once had character and meaning (Purcellville), towns that really care, have a lot of time, a lot of money, are really proud and in danger of being too pretentious or wrapped up to really keep in touch with reality, yet still hold a place in my heart for being home and old-fashioned and stuck up in keeping it that way (Waterford), and towns that hold themselves nicely to the hills and streams and forests around them (Lovettsville, Taylorstown, Hamilton, Lucketts, Hillsboro, Bluemont, Philomont, Round Hill) and still others that are ungodly, impossibly rich that I don't know much about (Middleburg) and probably others I'm forgetting. Be proud and for once give a damn about living in such a beautiful place you rich, lucky bastards!