Edition: U.S. / Global  UNIVERSITY PRESSES; Walden Pond vs. the
Mall  By Paul Raeburn Published: October 24, 1999   Community
Farms & Forests  in a New England Town.  By Brian Donahue.
Illustrated. 329 pp. New Haven:  Yale University Press. $27.50.
I grew up in what Brian Donahue calls ''the belly of the beast''
-- the suburbs. Our family lived in a three-bedroom made of
pumpkin-colored brick and shaped like a Monopoly house. The
neighborhood had once been farmland, but the only scrap of rural
character remaining was a weedy lot where I caught butterflies
and stuffed them into a jar with a cotton ball soaked in
cleaning fluid. Given enough time, I might have driven a few
lepidopteran species to extinction. But I didn't have the
chance. A house was built on the open lot, destroying the
neighborhood's last scrap of butterfly habitat.  Most
environmentalists wouldn't get upset with that sort of thing.
They're busy fighting to protect rain forests and preserve the
Endangered Species Act. But Donahue thinks they