Healing The Land

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Zamojski/186/166/21

In repairing landcuts, it is often hard to tell what the land might actually look like. Over last summer, KC and I both found our way to a nasty cut in Zamojski at about 4 a.m. thus it took on the name zzzzzzzzzzz park.

It was almost impossible to walk through the area as it was full of random intersecting banlines and non phantom ad signs. Over time, it gradually opened up as the new ad farm policy came out, it particularly helped to get rid of the banlines.

Like a crazy game of chess, piece by piece would get rejoined as it was abandoned or the owner sold out. It still didn’t really add up to a solid land mass or really give up its secrets though. It still isn’t clear exactly what LL is doing to negotiate with the land cutters and extortionists. (Or micro-parcel barons… but I will leave out the image that comes to mind with that term). Ultimately the only thing that matters is that things change.

In this past week alone, I have recovered 192m of abandoned micros, most belonging to the notorious “4-corners”. I had an idea what I would do to change the land around until, that is I actually got it.

I had no idea that such a sliced and diced parcel that I once could not even walk through is now something I can set out to sail open water from.

What do you do with land in a region with a name like Picnic? If it’s an ad field… its anything BUT a picnic to deal with. In the case of LandZen ZenLand owned by Cinco Pizzicato,

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Picnic/102/140/145

he has found the very heart of what recovering the Mainland is about. His 1648m of zen garden makes the most of what is missing.

In the land description he describes it as “the wabi-sabi of former ad farms”. Wikipedia quoted a summary by Richard R. Powell “It (wabi-sabi) nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”

Has it been that simple all along?

This is something between an obituary and a new beginning for what has influenced my SL experience the most.

Erewhon Park in Dongyeongju has been my home for over a year now. It has grown to a weird shaped area of over 30,000m. It began to grow as I was limited by random ad and land cut parcels that were like swiss cheese.
It became easier to just add land as I didn’t have the building experience to work around a no object entry parcel otherwise.

Once I began to create park space elsewhere, I also opened Erewhon to public access. It grew to touch 3 of the neighboring sims and has content going thousands of meters in the sky as well.

There have been small victories… there are no more ad signs present in the entire sim. There are still quite a few holes, many of which are insanely high priced and sunken down. Sooner or later there might be a policy strong enough to change that.

My building skills have at least gotten to where there is now a fishing area for the sinkholes. It does make me wonder though, as I keep pulling clownfish and mutants out of the landcuts; if those are parcels which are more toxic than we thought.

I had begun to turn Erewhon into a kind of overgrown abandoned farm that had become a public park featuring a range of possible activities. With the announcement of changes in adult content… I had begun to pull the hidden sex beds and replace them with swimming areas and cuddle balls.

The Memorial Garden for Klaatu Congrejo was moved out here as he had been such an influence for many people who fought for the mainland. It also seemed proper to have his memorial closer to the Mainland Museum which includes some of his work.

I have now begun closing Erewhon Park. KCs, the museum and the Treehugger bar will remain- condensed and depending on prims. Packing up has been slow and painful. But it is also too much to hold on to land that is no longer enjoyable as the fight for the Mainland has just been too long.

Green Ray Pond Park is an 8208m park created by Rem Nightfire. It’s located at  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Green Ray/147/166/82 Some of the areas are a bit of a maze of holdouts of landcuts and former ad plots. As Linden Labs finally begins to take care of their Mainland, hopefully the sins of the past will leave faster and faster.

Green Ray is one of those salt and pepper rock sims that leave you scratching your head a bit at 1.) WHY make that a texture over such a huge area?  2.) WHAT the frig do you plant in something like that? Fortunately Rem landed on the side of good taste in plants and trees rather than ad signs.

Along the road

The primary feature of the park is a 2 level pond connected by a small waterfall with benches and a cuddle rug nearby. The park is perfect to relax awhile listening to music or some of the many different birds in the area. Closer to the road is also a small area featuring some of Rem’s sculpture work as well as small walls he has made.

Just don't feed the wildlife

This is a blog of a different sort than the lost mainlander blog. Through this, I hope to make a listing of public parks within Second Life, particularly those which grew out of ad farms and land cuts. I hope that it will highlight the different ways which people are working to heal the land, and also to provide a central listing of such places.