On Saturday afternoon I had the pleasure of kayaking (with boyfriend and his canoeing co-workers) the Upper Cuyahoga River. The seven miles downstream on the river to the Camp Hi Livery was placid, and I was reminded how good green smells and how sonorous springtime should be; we were accompanied by bird song, dragonfly buzz and bull-frog blats as we paddled/floated along.

Today, I was in Cleveland walking between Ohio City and Tremont, lamenting the cement-shored-up Cuyahoga of my neighborhood; disbelieving it is even connected to the river I kayaked just a couple of days ago. Walking over the Abbey Avenue Bridge, I stopped to smell the tree blossoms along the hillside leading to the tracks along Train Avenue. I jumped when I saw a pair of eyes looking back at me. At first, I assumed it was just someone hanging out in the trees (for a variety of reasons, none of which I cared to analyze), but I soon realized that they were not human eyes. It was a large doe.

My first reaction was sadness. I was sad for the deer, and her kin, who are eking out an existence along the narrow strip of post-industrial green between the river and the train tracks. My second, and longer-lasting reaction, was hopefulness. The reason I stopped to smell, was the same reason the deer was there. Nature abhors a vacuum. Could the space left by departed industry be slowly filling with good growing things?

I looked into this peaceful animal’s eyes. Despite the drone of traffic, I was transported to the past and potential of our Cuyahoga—the verdant growth, the bird song, the hillside sloping down to the river. She stared at me for about 30 seconds before she turned and went in the other direction.

I went to the Twilight Hike in the Natural Flats and the Shrinking Cities exhibit at SPACES Gallery, but today was the first time I viscerally understood the potential for a “shrinking city” to embrace compactness and to truly become something different. A deer on Abbey Avenue, I had no idea.