Column: Don't become a house finch

Not everyone got to play in the snow when the ice struck Chapel Hill. I, for one, was stranded on the other side of the country. Raleigh-Durham International Airport’s closure left me with a 20-hour layover in Los Angeles.

As part of an admittedly rare change in priorities, I attended a conference in San Jose to focus on my “professional” goals, which involve working for a magazine that lets me wear hiking boots to work. In an attempt to reach that goal, I spent four days in a heavily air-conditioned convention center so expansive I could get lost in two separate hotels without ever having to breathe fresh air.

After that, plus a dozen hours spent watching both people and small birds peck around various airports, I needed some outside time. So I used my extensive layover to go running.

A jog in Los Angeles is like running on a treadmill while watching an infomercial. The terrain is utterly flat, and the only landmarks to differentiate the miles are billboards and bus stops plastered with advertisements. There is no variation.

It brought to mind a piece by Colorado-based writer Aaron Hirsh. In it he describes getting distracted during a shopping trip to Costco by little birds foraging in the aisles. He expands from there, explaining how the proliferation of big box stores have led to the spread of species that thrive in those man-made environments. These include not only the ubiquitous house finch he saw in Costco and I in the airport, but flies, raccoons, rats and roaches.

Running through the homogenous urban wasteland of L.A. made evident the chain store epidemic. I passed a McDonald’s, a Carl’s Jr., a Panda Express and hotels of every brand name you could imagine. The only wildlife I saw along three miles of road was a house finch.

Back in my hotel, lonely businessmen and women sat alone at tables set for two, eating quietly or flicking through their phones. A man struck up a conversation with his waiter. The waiter was leaving for Puerto Rico the next morning to attend a rum festival and go adventuring with a buddy. The businessman told him Puerto Rico was beautiful. He particularly recommended a Marriott there. That struck me as strange.

This guy was venturing to the Caribbean, I assume because he wanted to experience something different from the culture he was used to, and the advice he got was to stay in a place exactly like the one we were in.

Decisions as small as where to stay, where to shop and what to eat seem like the pet projects of die-hard environmentalists. But all the little decisions add up. We have urban sprawl because we like sprawling stores like Target and Costco. Rare, exotic-looking species are dying out in the U.S. because, when their unvaried competitors move in with suburbia, those competitors take over huge swathes of habitat

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Do you like wilderness? Do you like seeing animals other than rats, flies and house finches when you got outside? Be conscious of how you affect that situation. Shop local. Drive your car less. Maybe don’t stay in a Marriott.