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Andrew Fargo

Where Are The Boundaries?  

I was born and raised in what locals call “Upstate New York.” There have always been distinguishing distances between neighboring towns and cities. This way people know when they are leaving one and entering another. When I moved to Denver, Colorado, there were no obvious borderlines there. It seemed the entire area was just one gigantic city, with no beginning and no end. Chris Angus denotes in his essay, “The Nature of the North Country,” there may be that very danger, dissolving and extinguishing borderlines, creeping in on Upstate New York. “In a sense, we are an island in the North Country: we still have the chance to connect with the natural world, still have the chance to achieve physiological balance. But pressures from the outside chip away at its boundaries, and it may not last much longer as a haven.”

I arrived in Denver, Colorado, in October 2002. All the main routes were lined with stores and fast-food joints just like Arsenal Street in Watertown. I never veered off the main roads at first because the offshoots were an entangled mess. The streets made absolutely no sense. It seemed the city was not made in a grid-type pattern. The streets were more like my grandmother’s sewing box with all her yarn and thread tangled and knotted together. Not only were the streets impossible to understand, the same names were used over and over again. How could anyone know WHICH Xaynia Street to look for when, on an exploratory outing, I passed four of them? It wasn’t until later I found out that I had left Denver and driven through Aurora, Lakewood, Littleton, and back without even knowing I had left Denver in the first place. Where was the obvious space between the cities, that special gap to let you know you’ve left one and the other will be soon approaching?

When learning my way through the city, I felt like a lab rat finding his way through a maze. He starts out and goes a little distance, then goes back to where he came from, and then ventures out a little more and goes back to home until he has reached the end and can find his way from beginning to end and back. The only difference is that he gets a prize at the end. I simply got more and more frustrated. It boggled my mind that four cities could have grown into each other. In fact , there is a city that Denver literally grew around. You can actually be driving in Denver, drive into the east side of Englewood, exit the west side, and come out in Denver again. The space and boundaries are becoming more and more pressing issues in that area.

The state government of Colorado has actually made it impossible for any land between Denver and Colorado Springs, an hour-and-a-half drive south of Denver, to be developed in fear that the two expanding cities would grow into each other in the near future. That would be like Watertown and Syracuse growing so rapidly they grew together with no space between.

I moved back to my home in Upstate New York in June 2004 and at first hated it. I had gotten very used to the fast-paced nature of the city life. I still at times feel myself rushing here and rushing there. However, I’ve simmered down and have begun to appreciate the laid-back nature of the area I call home. There are things I wish we had that we don’t, yet it seems the lack of these amenities is what gives Northern New York its charm.

The Watertown area has been quickly expanding, seemingly almost overnight. New “mainstream” stores pop up one at a time at a rapid pace, almost like a lawn full of dandelions. First there is one, and then the entire yard has been taken hostage. The distinguishing spaces between Watertown and Brownville, Watertown and Sackets Harbor, and Watertown and Calcium are quickly shrinking. As Chris Angus stated in his essay, the North Country is like an island. We are secluded from the so-called city life; however, the outside influences are in fact eating away at the boundaries that make the upstate region unique. How long will it take before we become lab rats entrapped in a web of confusion? Will those born and raised here allow that to happen? Will Northern New York be able to ward off mainstream America and remain its charming, unique, and unconforming self?