{ Environmentally the related problems/issues of development are most
{ serious, too: they (whoever "they" are/is) seem quickly to be filling
{ up every possible space (they aren't eveing billing the empty-flatness
{ as scenic any more) in states like Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and New
{ Mexico (tho maybe not so quickly NM--so little economy there, I guess).
{ I see it when i drive cross country to visit in Arizona twice a year
{ or so. The feeling I get on observing it over time is one of frenetic
{ desperation, though of course I'm being dramatic about that, and it is
{ just an intuitive hunch, but nonetheless a repeated feeling. These
{ places have all gone development-insane--they're building houses on top
{ of houses in places that have very little ground water supply.
Herewith, an oldie or two of mine about the way things were (or might have
been) out there:
Stunt
Nothing much harder
than falling off a horse.
By grace of whatever--
no broken neck.
Ranging west,
driving across salt flats after dark.
High peaks--behind and to the north--
shrouded in darkness and tattered cloud.
Headlights pop up on the horizon,
steadily bear down upon you for half an hour,
maybe more--whoosh by--red taillights
jiggle in the mirror, half an hour more.
Nothing fades. It stretches and breaks.
The trick is to survive the snap-back.
In the West
What do you do
out in the West
where the proud remnants
of European aristocracy
climb down from their phaetons
in haughty disarray
and walk, bare-headed, into the desert
never to be heard from again
unless it is in some dusty town
called Drygulch or Sidewinder,
bypassed by the railroad,
wells long ago gone dry,
where they take their parched throats,
their sun-cracked faces,
into the only saloon left in town
and ask the one-eyed barkeep
for champagne, and are told that
there's one bottle left
which he's kept for just
such an occasion?
Hal Please stand clear of the closing doors.
Halvard Johnson
===============
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website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
blog: http://entropyandme.blogspot.com/
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