There is a couple hundred acre Girl Scout camp nearby that I used to manage. It was fenced many decades ago and then essentially left untouched. There are a few campsites with
wood floors where we would put up tents every summer, there are various buildings scattered here and there, and a couple of lakes were dammed over a hundred years ago. The rest was basically unhindered. When I was there, it had transformed itself into a separate eco-system. Or maybe rather, it had preserved what the area's eco-system was like before our town built up. It is really quite remarkable what removing farming and buildings will do for a place. There are snakes everywhere, unlike outside the
fence. There are porcupines and quail that haven't been seen in, well, ...forever.
Trees grow and die and fall as they will.
Just down the hill from us is the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was established in the 1970's. I remember the valley before it became park. Lots of houses, a number of really vicious nasty toxic waste dumps, many businesses along the river (including a paper plant) and everywhere well lit at night. You couldn't fish and keep in the river unless you wanted to grow extra parts. It was a (once beautiful) mess.
Now, years and millions upon millions of federal dollars later, the buildings are gone, the
lights are gone, the dumps cleaned up, the river is no longer polluted, the noise of daily business life is quieted. The herons, coyotes, beavers, eagles, turkeys, turtles, wood peckers, mink and even occasional bears are back. The beavers have transformed hundreds of acres of once dry farm land into beaver "swamps". The Park has even removed some not native trees, so more "original" trees can flourish. The waterfalls run free. And the few remaining farm fences, in now deep woods, rust away. Each year it becomes increasingly difficult to tell where the friends of my youth once lived. All quite the change in just a partial lifetime.
Even our town is transformed. A hundred and fifty years ago, we used to be able to stand on our barn bridge and see the town center a mile and a half away. Now it is all woods as all the other farmers have quit tilling and got easier
city jobs. I have planted thousands of trees, but most of the woods around us now have replanted themselves simply by being left alone. It's so different now it has become hard to place where old family photographs were taken.
So, what you propose is possible. Remove the "works of man" and nature will have her way with a place. But it generally takes time and money and desire to do. The acres across the road from you could host lots of life, not generally seen in corn fields and tract house lands. It's not anywhere large
enough for a bear, but you could have butterflies and birds and small animals not common to many "used" places. Good luck. What you dream of is Gaia's and God's work.
...P.S. We host
wwoof'ers and have an
intentional community in our corner of green Earth. If you visit our
permie profile, readers can find us and maybe someday come for a visit.
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