Most of the bad parts of nature—mud, the usual unpleasant insects, an ecology dominated by poison ivy and thorn plants of various sorts—without the good parts.

Most of the bad parts of nature—mud, the usual unpleasant insects, an ecology dominated by poison ivy and thorn plants of various sorts—without the good parts. Nice, long views, pretty hills or mountains, ocean or nice lakes, dramatic rock formations (even for very modest values of “dramatic”), tall forests that aren’t edge-to-edge carpeted three feet high with poison and thorn plants, rivers and streams that are more than sluggish smelly mud-ditches? None of that. Zero. Not close enough to visit on a normal weekend unless you want to spend twice as much time driving as being in the place you wanted to go. You wanna go outside and enjoy “nature”, you do it somewhere that sees a lawn-mower on a regular basis, and/or is partially paved. Really bad.