Blessed is the man...

...who builds his mall on a landfill.

West of the quaint cobblestone streets and gigantic oaks of Wilmette the trees gradually grow smaller until giving way to the flat plains created by glaciers thousands of years ago.  These former prairie lands of Illinois have long been claimed by the endless grid that is Chicago.  I make the journey from my deciduous lakeside village at least once a week to pay homage to the shrines of suburban housewifery.  I bow to my own consumerist idols at Trader Joes, Whole Foods, REI, and DSW shoes.  Someone in a marketing office far away has me all figured out and neatly quantified in statistics on a graph.  They then give that information to businesses who adeptly construct a large sparkling new outdoor mall with all of the stores to whom I give my homage.  But there is something strange about this peculiarly tidy mall with its pond, fountain, and geese.  There is a large hill behind and under the construction.  In some other city a hill may be nothing of note, but Chicago, in the words of my hairdresser, “got screwed by the glaciers.” There are little to no hills in the Chicagoland area,  so ones of such magnitude as that which protrude from behind Whole Foods Market call a bit of attention to themselves.  This hill is a trash mountain.  A Landfill.  A huge mountain filled with our consumption and waste.  Like Moses coming down from the mount, I leave those shiny stores with bags filled with more stuff.  In my face, the glory slowly fades as those bags become new trash bags, more stuff to fill my tidy green rubbish bin.  Where will my trash go?   To another trash hill that might become the next ski resort or foundation for a new mall?  I do not  know.  I’m not sure I’m even bothered enough to change my ways.  After all, we can always put more stores on top of those trash mountains, right?  It is just so efficient.  And the pond makes it all seem so much nicer, don't you think?