This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me – Woody Guthrie
It defines us. Land. Why do we drive such big cars? Why do we have such big houses? Why do we eat so much? Because we can.
I zig-zagged across this giant country over the summer. I was struck by the fact that because we can we have without a thought for if we should.

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.