Somewhere close a newspaper lines the plastic bottom of a birdcage. The droppings of a tropical songbird cover yesterday’s news: a pelican draped in oil below the headline “Size of Spill in Gulf of Mexico Larger Than Thought.”
Somewhere else a woman nears a gas station and vocalizes her personal boycott of the BP on her right, instead she pulls left into Exxon and fills her car with conviction.
“I sometimes just come up here… to breathe.”
Freeman quietly breathes and I join. He recollects a season when the trees were as tall as him: a time I have no eyes for seeing nor wisdom to fully understand.
The steep hillside reaches up with its undergrowth to hold last year’s cones and needles and to guide the moment’s breeze. I was truly alive that moment. A followed silence allowed for the hearing of the world beyond our breath.
Tractor trailor trucks crowd our highways and make one wonder what ever happened to trains and how can it be economical for all those big rigs to run all over the country.
But there is something I’ve been seeing a lot of on the back of these trucks that brings a smile to my face.
The wings of a windmill look small in the distance, but when an escorted wide-load passes you on an interstate with one wobbling on its extended trailer you’re humbled by the size and the knowledge that this is only one piece of a giant.
The land is vast, but taxes surely make it expensive. What is the answer?
There are thousands of cows placed on a small plot of land. Food is dumped into troughs, and manure is scooped away. It’s extremely efficient.
The smell is somewhat nostalgic if you have grown up on a farm, but this is not your grandfather’s family farm. These CAFO’s are jarring in their depiction of what is truly for dinner.
Is efficiency what we desire in our animal related agriculture? This is the kind of question we must ask if we are truly to be a sustainable nation.
Irony can be so cruel.
Annah and I parted ways in Iowa City, Iowa. I was in search of sustainability. Annah was on her way back to Athens to make our lives a bit more sustainable. Rent never rests.
She had flown into Columbus, Ohio. I was navigating our 1980 diesel wagon across the fields of Iowa, hoping to make Nebraska by sunset. After a lengthy layover in Chicago, she landed safely at 3 a.m. in Columbus. I stumbled upon rows of “ditch weed,” bordering the oceans of industrial soy beans and corn, while attempting to photograph feedlots on Iowa back roads.
Annah directed the cab driver towards her friends house in Columbus. She paused for roughly five seconds in her decision of whether to turn left or right at an intersection. That five seconds could have made all the difference.
I came close to Nebraska, but ran out of diesel and steam near Dave’s World truck stop in Onawa, Iowa. I pulled my back seat down and made a bed of my car.
Annah eventually told the cab driver to make the turn. A car coming in their direction swerved into the cab’s lane and then swerved again. His car slammed into a telephone pole. He was drunk.
