“The second mode [to deal with unsafe cities] is to take refuge in vehicles. This is the technique practiced in the big wild-animal reservations of Africa, where tourists are warned to leave their cars under no circumstances until they are reach a lodge. It is also the technique practiced in Los Angeles.” - Jane Jacobs
The steadiest farrier, who trims the mount’s feet when I manage to screw ‘em up, is a small statured young lad of fifty or so years. Gifted with a with a back as strong as blue spring steel, he endures.
He’s punched cattle in Montana, filmed hunts for big time hunting personalities all over the Rockies and filmed and featured his wife’s catfish noodling career.
He resides in the same house where his relatives hid silver under the smokehouse from Yankees and marauding Confederate bushwhackers. He says he’s still digging for the box of silver.
Recently there was the loss of an old companion blue eyed heeler who was quickly replaced by a new pup for the business of shoeing horses for a living.
The new dog has two different colored eyes and two speeds. The pup quickly developed a love for frisbees. Most recently, the dog tracked a frisbee, full speed, right back to the launchers leg and broke both big bones below the knee. Not the dog’s leg bones, but the tough as nails throwers leg bones!
“They snapped like a rifle shot,” he said.
He refers to this income altering injury as a “Freak Accident.” The young dog is fine and the frisbee has been retired.
The other day, when confronted with a spit hoof, that was considered to be out of control, with what I thought was catastrophic damage in the making, I called for backup and some much needed continuing education.
That particular morning’s conversation and split hoof repair tutorial, with the new foot doctor, slowly cascaded to the state of deer hunting in Riceville, and general deer density in that part of the nearby county.
Riceville of my early youth was pure country. Squirrel hunts and rabbits and farm ponds where a kind farmer wouldn’t mind a father and son dove shoot, or kicking up a covey or two, on a bright and brisk November afternoon.
The new guy working under the paint horse, allowed that his hunting country was “slap lousy” with deer now days.
“I took the boy for his first deer hunt last fall, and in the early hour, we had three eight pointers try to slip by us. He got the biggest one. This is a place where for many years, if I shot a spike, it was a huge season for me! The place has definitely changed since those days. It’s almost hard to believe how much it’s changed since I started hunting.”
This ‘change in hunting places' phenomenon invariably propelled me drifting back to all the nearby places where we once stomped out in search of wild game and adventure. Lost places that are now covered in asphalt. Local politicians refer to these old fields and woodlots as “responsible growth,” or maybe behind closed doors, a “Homebuilder’s Association Wet Dream.”
I have some amount of all too painful difficulty trying to list lost places to hunt and fish that are now saturated in “affordable housing.”
Odd how sad the loss of wildlife habitat can be. Tax revenue is an even harder, or maybe a much more depressing concept, to understand. Only an elected County Commissioner and a gang of greedy subdivision builders can truly look this strange brand of evil in the eye and manage a smile.
I guess a smart, younger fellow might load the old wagon and search out new ground, a more rural and less dense existence. Safe from the ravages of a developers “wet dream” of houses constructed so tightly that profit falls like rain. So tightly arranged that tax revenue quickly grows so that new sewage treatment plants can allegedly be built. Treated sewage that won’t paint the nostrils with hot crap.
But for those who don’t want to load the wagon, or can’t pull up stakes for the new pastoral, well it’s sadly more of the same business, as they say, as usual.
I endeavor not to read editorials, or letters to the editor, every chance I get. But, on occasions there are slip-ups and backsliding. One letter, here recently, written by an old friend thus inclined to write letters, tells me about one particular elected official who was quoted as saying repeatedly, something egregiously stupid, about the issue of unconstrained growth in this county. The letter writer also tells us that this politician won his commission throne by a margin of only 30 or so votes.
My buddy goes on and proposes a cure for stupid and implores us all to vote more intelligently as soon as we can. I’m not too certain that voting is our best option any more.
I don’t begrudge those that sold mom and pop’s 20 plus acre slice of paradise. 50 to 70 thousand dollars an acre sounds right hard to say no to when you really get down to cutting nuts.
Maybe those who cashed out the old farm can now afford to move more rural, afford “inexpensive” living with a new well, clean water and a reliable well pump.
Go west young man, go west!
Forget mom and dad’s old neighbors. Rent that U-haul. The old wagon in Paw Paw’s barn wouldn’t take you far enough.
Forget the days when you could hop on your bicycle, with a single barrel slung over your shoulder and pedal to your favorite field or woodlot.
Don’t regret that you now have to drive hours to find what you once cherished in your own county.
Responsible growth, you say?
Smarter voters, you say?
Progress, you say?
Housing so dense that on any calm morning you can stand in your new kitchen, with a cup of fresh coffee, and listen to your new neighbor, in his new bathroom, ten feet away, pass gas, you say?
Responsible, more affordable housing is what this county needs, you say?
Enough said!
Watching this ‘unchecked growth thing’ spill out at our feet is reminiscent of once being a witness to a slowly moving circus train as it slid off the tracks.
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