2004-10-13
AUTUMN COLOR BEGINS
This was once a home to beaver, their mounded habitat lay close to the river's edge to the right of the little islet and just out of sight | They are gone now | Perhaps trapped out or [more likely] freightened away by a bunch of dumb cityboys who were down here last summer | They were away from home playing Dukes of Hazzard wreaking havoc with our local terrain rather than their own |
No lie! Late last August, I was standing at the same spot this picture was made from when suddenly two testosterone vehicles nimbly made their way down river toward the deep part | nestled in the bed of one of the trucks was a babe-magnet velveteen couch and a giant-sized ice cooler; I could see a keg tap even from that distance |
These guys seemed completely unaware of where they were headed | At first I said and did nothing | But when they got to the edge of the deep part, I yelled out,
"You boys crazy or just stupid?" | They stopped right away but, it took them a moment to respond, wondering at first where I was calling from | "Drops off steep right there, you'll lose yer pretty truck"
<--[Not to be dramatic, but what you see to the left would be easy to get out of compared to what they were in for]
The guy whose four-wheel behemoth was in front looks blank for a moment, then "I wondered why the bed was getting mucky" and very slowly began edging back; a move made more difficult since his buddy's dirt grinder was right behind his |
I stood there as they slowly made their way back up the river | I was pretty sure these were the guys who ripped up a stream bed about a mile or so upriver ~ their vehicles certainly had the power to do that |
Now, my warning was not out of kindness but enlightened self interest | I wouldn't have felt bad had they gotten hopelessly stuck or had their overgrown Tonkas capsized into the river | It was deep there, but
they could have gotten themselves out alive without much trouble |
But the trucks ~ that's a different story | There is really no way to get in to salvage them from there | Their trucks would just have rotted | And we [the locals] would be stuck with the oil and gas sludge polluting a perfect fishing spot and swimming hole for who knows how long? |
I could have called the Game Warden, that is, if my own truck wasn't a mile away in the other direction, if I didn't have to drive to some other site to get cell phone reception | So they got away that time | But you know what? | I haven't seen them back | Which is fine | For I prefer the area to remain as pristine as this granitoid glacial erratic ~also along the path to the fishing spot ~ and not all cluttered with human detritus |
This was once a home to beaver, their mounded habitat lay close to the river's edge to the right of the little islet and just out of sight | They are gone now | Perhaps trapped out or [more likely] freightened away by a bunch of dumb cityboys who were down here last summer | They were away from home playing Dukes of Hazzard wreaking havoc with our local terrain rather than their own |
No lie! Late last August, I was standing at the same spot this picture was made from when suddenly two testosterone vehicles nimbly made their way down river toward the deep part | nestled in the bed of one of the trucks was a babe-magnet velveteen couch and a giant-sized ice cooler; I could see a keg tap even from that distance |
These guys seemed completely unaware of where they were headed | At first I said and did nothing | But when they got to the edge of the deep part, I yelled out,
"You boys crazy or just stupid?" | They stopped right away but, it took them a moment to respond, wondering at first where I was calling from | "Drops off steep right there, you'll lose yer pretty truck"
<--[Not to be dramatic, but what you see to the left would be easy to get out of compared to what they were in for]
The guy whose four-wheel behemoth was in front looks blank for a moment, then "I wondered why the bed was getting mucky" and very slowly began edging back; a move made more difficult since his buddy's dirt grinder was right behind his |
I stood there as they slowly made their way back up the river | I was pretty sure these were the guys who ripped up a stream bed about a mile or so upriver ~ their vehicles certainly had the power to do that |
Now, my warning was not out of kindness but enlightened self interest | I wouldn't have felt bad had they gotten hopelessly stuck or had their overgrown Tonkas capsized into the river | It was deep there, but
they could have gotten themselves out alive without much trouble |
But the trucks ~ that's a different story | There is really no way to get in to salvage them from there | Their trucks would just have rotted | And we [the locals] would be stuck with the oil and gas sludge polluting a perfect fishing spot and swimming hole for who knows how long? |
I could have called the Game Warden, that is, if my own truck wasn't a mile away in the other direction, if I didn't have to drive to some other site to get cell phone reception | So they got away that time | But you know what? | I haven't seen them back | Which is fine | For I prefer the area to remain as pristine as this granitoid glacial erratic ~also along the path to the fishing spot ~ and not all cluttered with human detritus |
Pix Credits: The two local pics are my own | The vehicle stuck in the mud is adapted from something found at Lyons Design, the truck apparently known as "Mudzilla" | Don't get mne wrong here; I'm not opposed to monster trucks or all terrain vehicles | I believe that if they are to be used, they ought to be used responsibly | They make great farm and lumber operations tools | Gadding about aimlessly, tearing up fragile components of the landscape, is not what this entails | If you've got to use one for recreation, then show some good citizenship and get some area [maybe an old sand quarry, for example] designated for that purpose | But stop f***ing up the environment | The planet is our "house"; all of us have an obligation to keep it in shape |
¶ 22:39
