Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone?
Joni Mitchell
OUT OUR WAY, a lovely little open green space, consisting of oak stands, a stream course, some meadow-like fields and a pond rests untouched by developers. There’s a wonderful Indian grinding rock to discover out there, looking as fresh as if it were used only yesterday.
The whole site is within walking distance of our little subdivision and several others. The freeway’s hum never abates, but deep in an oak stand or near the rushing creek, one can easily imagine that civilization hasn’t yet crept over the hill.
Red tails circle in the morning. Cottontails bound through the knee-high grasses. Jackrabbits race wherever they need to go. There are muddy traces of dainty deer hooves and three-pronged turkey feet. We've heard the coyotes baleful cries and there is talk of bobcats in the area. Blackberry thickets and poison oak flourishes.
The pond supports snowy egrets and pairs of mallards and some sort of fish, because, frequently, eight-year-olds and their attendant fathers are harvesting fish. Or, at least, attempts are made at this.
We walk the dogs in this little area allowing them to run off-leash fetching sticks and swimming in the pond. Often other walkers with and without canine companions, young folks on bicycles, and, as mentioned, the fisherkids and their dads greet us.
This pleasant spot is not public property. Clearly, it is privately owned; but the owner – either some developer who is waiting out the recession or some landowner waiting to cash in – has decided that prohibiting access is more trouble than it is worth.
Therefore, the expanse is crisscrossed with trails and paths both paralleling the creek and climbing the hillsides. In a sense, it is a public / private partnership based upon:
I, as the owner, let you, the public, pass, because, well, just because...
YESTERDAY, the Church of the Open Road dealt with an issue arising in this area – one that shouldn’t be an issue at all. As a result, a thick-milled plastic garbage bag now holding about thirty pounds of crap now rests in my residential garbage can. The Church collected Happy Meal wrappers, soda cups, Starbucks cups, beer cans, cracker boxes, water bottles, an empty roller of aluminum foil, fishing tackle containers, nose and toilet tissue, broken glass and even the remnants of one of those 5.99 white plastic chairs you pick up at Wal-Mart or Target.
Still up there is a Sacramento Bee newspaper box along with three or four derelict and stripped automobile bodies. (I’m sure the latter have been there for much longer than any of the encroaching subdivisions.)
I walked away with berry-vine scratched arms, an out of shape and aching back and a pretty good deal of resentment toward those members of my tribe who figure
…and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps… [Genesis 1:26] somehow means pissing on our Mother Earth.
THERE’S NOT MUCH the Church of the Open Road can do about this other than to, occasionally, walk through the area with a trash bag and to ask that you, my fellow “parishioners,” forward this post through your circle of friends (Facebook, motorcycle forum or whatever) with hope that, as it circulates, it will touch someone who otherwise might just leave their garbage on the ground in some other public / private space. Thus, ultimately ruining that relationship for all of us.
Like we used to say in grade school: “Pass it on.”
© 2012
Church of the Open Road Press
