Oh, give me a home
Christine May 8th, 2008
Where the Buffalo roam.
Here is another view from the same spot as the Sky Watch photo but looking in the other direction due northwest. Yesterday we made a quick excursion over the border to Idaho to look at a sailboat (a really old sailboat, but that story is yet to be told). It rained off and on the entire trip and by the time we reached Sandpoint the place felt worse than soggy and many areas were under water. Yeah, we need that boat honey, to get home.
Anyway, how does our trip into Idaho relate to this photo of wide open spaces? This view is not under water. Nor is it completely dredged or excavated by huge machines moving dirt and ripping out trees, creating mountains out of piles of gravel, or basically making a mucky mess of things all in the name of progress and building big houses. My point obviously: I was not very impressed with Sandpoint. I remember it from twenty years ago when and where Coldwater Creek hung its shingle — it used to be a sleepy, artsy town with soft industry. OK, it had timber happening too. Now it looks more like the tractor/ RV/ industrial outskirts of Spokane.
So, Sandpoint is predictably following all the rules of the game: it is developing fast towards Ugly. We drove past many wetlands on the way, lovely meandering ponds skirted with thick forests and some of them actually had moose in them; but those wild areas are being squeezed and encroached upon by parcel acre landowners. What will become of the wildlife? What about all the birds and pond creatures who have lived there for longer than any humans have been around? Will the story always read: Humans first? Not only humans first but humans with lots of money first? (If it isn’t the wildlife being squeezed it is those which have not who are squeezed, for example, in the third world.) 0h yes, sorry my point being: how will the collective conscious evolve and emerge if not from the individual who finally says instead of it’s my right, turns and says:: no I’m not going to build here because it isn’t right? I am posturing this mental and moral enlightenment, which is still in my dreams mind you, this progression of the individual consciousness might be our only hope since the local county governments can’t seem to do anything to curb rampant development, nor do they see any reason to worry about it. They can’t see the forest for the houses. Oh, and neither can anyone else.
Ah, so we come home to a relatively neat and fresh environment but we can see the same building and development virus going on around here too. Big signs out in the middle of a scrub-arid hillside advertising a lot for your next big McMansion. Nothing there but a few meadowlarks and how in the heck do you propose to get water up that steep, dry ravine which will probably turn into a raging torrent the next time we have a thunder storm? Ah, I see that’s where you’ll get your water.
Back again to the photo. Isn’t it peaceful, serene, quiet and empty looking? It sure is because this is an established National Reserve set aside last century by the Federal Government for the buffalo, antelope, deer and elk. It took an act of Congress. And you can’t build there.
