Thank you, Paige Bridgens and Ruth Woodring, for encouraging us to imagine something better than a car lot, even a different King Street, in your eloquent letter [“Where once there was a car lot, let there be a forest,” Gazette, April 3].

I have many reasons to visit King Street, and every time, I lament what looks and feels like an ugly asphalt wasteland: wasted potential in our otherwise beautiful town. Only by imagining something different for our community — and by extension our world — as many are already doing (the Pedal People, the rail trail, Grow Food and other farms, to name just a few) can we “breathe life,” as they write, into a healthy future.

Let’s start dreaming bigger: bigger than car lots and storage facilities and other “monuments to consumerism” (thank you to Aubrey Menard, for your letter of Jan. 29), to create spaces that support living, breathing beings and the land that sustains us. Thank you for reminding us what is possible, which feels like a first step. Let’s see if we can take it and run from there.

Rachel Wysoker

Northampton