Did you know that car crash deaths rose by 18% in 2021, even though the number of people driving to work–and presumably anywhere else–has dropped?* This doesn't make sense. Have people gotten so used to being in lockup they've forgotten how to drive? Are they driving angrier? What the heck is going on?
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| A relic: Rusted enough to be an artifact instead of trash. |
Some of us are very angry, angrier at a level I can’t remember happening in the past. Disruption on flights, part of our daily news lately, with over a thousand incidents racked up by the FAA in just the first six months of 2021. No longer mere disagreements, but disruptive yelling has been rocking school boards across the country. Even students, or maybe that's not so surprising. Resignations are happening all over when antagonisms became unbearable. Any public meeting seems to have become an opportunity to vent. (Even here in Vermont, where northeastern Vermonters, including their state representative, actually applauded extraordinarily gross racist comments at an anti-critical race theory meetinglast summer––the subject matter itself an evidence of misrepresentation.)** Demonstrators protest mask wearing and snipe at health workers, even in areas where the pandemic is raging. No surprise that gun purchases are rising. Again. We have lost any sense of an “us.” We are only aggrieved individuals, each with our own axe to grind.
Once upon a time, as begins the fairy tale, when there were threats from something outside of our individual selves, we pulled together and felt strengthened by that. Now, we are at war with just about everyone else. And this isn’t just us, the U.S. us. Social media amplifies it all as we well know and brings it home, makes it personal. Once gossip was the hottest news to read about, but now it's the latest paranoid speculation. It’s all out there and everywhere, released like the virus. I believe it began somewhere in the still-unraveled past from which Donald Trump emerged. He freed people from holding back, made it feel okay to be angry, mean, even cruel. He embodied a sort of ignorance-based fascism.
That genie isn’t going back to the bottle anytime soon.
**
That's what I start thinking about when i'm looking at the Outside, the "real world" outside. Everything feels much better when I am in the physical palpable outside, the one that's right out the back door.
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| We explore, Skyler leading the way. |
My neighbors (and family) next door bought some 30 acres of land behind my house in the last days of 2021. It had belonged to a person who had owned it for many years, never used it for much except for some woodcutting a few years ago, and had been frustrated by the fact that it was pretty much devoid of access except by means of a long neglected and now much overgrown road originally created in the late 1700’s. This resulted in an ultimately fruitless attempt to re-create that road with the not-so-benevolent aid of another neighbor from further up the street who indulged in making this a tiny local cause celebre. (The complete saga of this episode can be found in my post called “Road Stories,” May, 2018.)
Posting was one of the first things to be done, as there have been episodes of out-of-season deer hunting, and sometimes an unknown number of hunters showing up in what is a relatively small area. And then there’s the old “road” issue which you could figure leads somewhere to hunt or cut wood or camp. (It doesn’t.) Next on the agenda was clearing paths, some that already existed but were overgrown, others that made new connections.
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| Posting means no hunting without permission. And NO HOUNDING!*** |
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| Fallen branches everywhere and the occasional fallen tree were cut and cleared. |
The land is surprisingly rugged, considering that before you enter the woods you are in meadow that has been kept clear, except for a copse here and there either by mowing or cows. There is wetland, cliffs, small mountains, and deep bowls.
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| The deep bowl (I call it the abyss) slopes down to the left. |
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| And behind this cliff is the northeast end of the property. |
By the time you I’ve done my usual circumlocution, a loop extended now by new trails, I have gotten so distracted by the prints in the snow by the sounds, and, well, by everything, that all the rest of it is forgotten. It’s hard in the woods to think of all the anger and violence and benighted ideology out there, most especially the hateful, paranoid kind.
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| Deer trails are everywhere. I like the tiny handprint-like tracks of raccoons. |
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| A flock of turkeys marched along this path as if it were made for them. |
*Article in Substack by Matthew Yglesias
** VTDigger quoted in blog post, September 10, 2021
*** Hounding, or hunting of game (e.g., bears) with radio-collared dogs is still permitted in Vermont, although it is widely opposed, as the dogs are usually far from their handlers, hence not controlled, and often harass wildlife.
