Bit of a pathway by an old duck pond...
And just inside a chain-link fence...
Everything about this scene is man-made, or at least man-moved. Nature or Nature's God made the pines, but they were planted there by men. The duck pond probably was not there until it was put on the hill as a means of dealing with runoff, and under our feet is the giant concrete system to keep every house on this large hill nice and dry.
I've talked about this kind of thing in the past, mostly about water towers, but I'll say it again -- we don't appreciate how terrific we have it in America thanks to quality engineering. When bridges fail or a natural disaster wipes out a town it's awful, but we also know that poor municipal budgeting and sometimes stupid ideas make things worse. Systems require upkeep, and bridges need to be built with long-established math stuff. States racked by drought shouldn't have to rely on century-old systems designed for much smaller populations because the politicians spent all the money elsewhere. What I'm saying is, we have excellent and often unseen engineering going on all around us, and we ought to demand it all the time and appreciate it too.
And I really mean that. If we did appreciate it for the modern miracle it is, promoting health and prosperity, people would really celebrate the opening of a new wastewater management plant rather than find it an occasion for mockery because it's BORRRR-ring. If we were grateful for things like well-constructed overpasses and upgrades to roads, our political class -- which never misses a chance to run between a project and the cameras -- would fund them adequately, and spend less money on vote-buying and monorail-type schemes.
As it is, it's a miracle we have such fine work being done. Software engineering is probably the only kind that can make the engineer rich overnight, and even famous, but we really need engineers of water systems, roads, bridges, and electricity more. Things would be a lot messier around here without them.
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