Life on the Farm (albeit briefly)
I was put in charge of the farm for this weekend and next. My responsibilities include but are not limited to raking, weeding, feeding horses, cats, dogs, walking said dogs, grooming horses, cleaning part of the house. It’s been stressful, to say the least. I have a newfound respect for my parents, who do this every single day. But I think the rewards are also kind of great. Like tonight, when I was standing outside, filling troughs and staring at a beautiful starry sky. that should be reason enough to stop development. People never realize how many stars there are, and how beautiful they are, and how our paved roads with streetlights reflecting off of them are affecting what we see, or better said, what we aren’t seeing. It scares me how suddenly we are sprawling out. Instead of taking steps to conserve what we use and what we are, we are beginning to think that 8000 square foot houses with swimming pools and Hummers are normal. I can’t think of anything worse than not cutting back on everything we use. Than not making the effort to do larger loads of laundry and to walk more. I understand that my parenst are so far out in the country they have to drive in. I get that. But I don’t understand living a mile away from your library and getting in your car to drive there.
It saddens me to think that we are destroying things for no particular reason. That we are tearing up new land every day and taking down trees instead of putting them up and watering our lawns during the worst drought this country has ever seen. I’m always trying to figure out how to be more conservative and people are using the water that I’m saving to dump into their perfectly green grass. What can we do? What more can we do to stop this? This fall is the hottest in NC I can ever remember and I’m worried we’ll either not see snow again or see so much we won’t be able to get around normally. I feel so hopeless. I saw a GMC commercial last night about a new huge hybrid SUV that gets up to 20 mpg. And I immediately thought, “That’s the best you can do?” That’s it?” We think that’s really going to help us out of this situation.
I know there’s a whole school of thought that believes global warming is myth. And I think that it DOESN’T MATTER. It doesn’t matter if it’s a myth or not. We should still be trying to conserve. I wonder what would happen if they put a moratorium on building for a full 12 months. If people could only purchase homes that were already built. If they couldn’t bulldoze or destroy living land. If they had to go with what was already out there. I think the housing market would increase instead of decrease. I think people would learn how to be content with what they had. I think people would think more carefully about what they use space for. There are lots of families who live in tiny houses elsewhere and are better for it. So why aren’t we? what makes Americans “too good” for it?
