Short of boarding a plane to the Rockies, would-be backpackers craving a bit of rugged landscape could hardly do better than New Hampshire's White Mountains: a vast backyard of fiery leaves, above-tree-line views and some of New England's best hiking.
But just as predominantly coastal Brazilians tend to ignore the Amazon until someone else turns up there, Canadians focus on their vast backyard when outsiders seem to be interfering: proposing "internationalization" of the Arctic, proposing United Nations supervision of Native populations, or sending well-financed foreign scientific expeditions.
And let's not forget the play of Mother Nature's dramatic glory in any sunset, the hummingbird in your backyard, or the vast blue sky.
Indonesia has over 300 million backyard poultry, and vast commercial poultry industry estimated to hold an annualized population of 900 million birds (ILRI 2012).
They hear music announcing commercial breaks, or to signify that the contents of their suburban back garden have "morphed again", and "the familiar Carrigan backyard is now a vast field of charred human remains".
America has a vast pool of untapped resources in its backyard.
We are, after all, part of a vast and connected ecosystem shifting not just our backyard ponds and the little tadpoles inside them, but our inner human landscape as well.
As a result of this entrenched rural poverty, increasing numbers of people are moving to cities, where they live in vast shanty towns, euphemistically known as "informal settlements," or in backyard shacks in townships such as Alexandra and Soweto.
Of course, that reflects the brilliance of Twitter, the global backyard fence, a networking phenom that enables communities, vast and small, to coalesce and dissipate around common interests -- and fleeting gossip.
In the backyards of suburban ranch homes, fence doors open to vast strawberry fields.
Feb. 28: The administration introduces its first energy initiative, calling for all Americans to join "a vast army of wildcatters" and drill for oil in their own backyards, churchyards, schoolyards and neighborhood parks.
