I think it was the beginnings of the meltdown, almost three years ago, that I first came upon the City Forest. I was talking into my cellphone with someone, maybe my Dad, about where the economy was going, where it was taking all of our clients. It was about finding ways to ride it out. I remember walking and talking further and further away from the office till I ended up at a large half-open garbage collection center. Cycle-rickshaws came by from time to time to drop off refuse from the neighborhood that a truck would later load up and take to a landfill somewhere. Behind it was a small gateway, and behind that another kind of reality altogether.