My Country, My Town, My Home

Though I may never know what it is to live in a place as incredibly, remotely, wild and raw as Alaska, I do know what it is to live in constant connection to wild space. Here in the high desert we are hours away from anything that could be called a city. We are surrounded by forested mountains, surrounded by desert and more mountains. Our water is precious. Our air is discussed in idle talk in town. The state of our forests, our mesa, our wildlife and our residents are always known, shared, appreciated. Someone may live in an apartment over a shop in town, but they will know that the bears and coyotes are coming down much farther than usual, and they will know that it's because of the drought. They will know what we have to do to protect them from becoming a danger to us and thereby to themselves.

Around here we know what affects the prices of our food, when the water levels are low, the trout are too small and the mines in outlying communities affect our water and air. We know that the government has picked our skies for low altitude warcraft training and what that will do to each and all of the afformentioned things. We know that they are trying to build a major nuclear facility in nearby Los Alamos which is in a wildfire zone, among earthquake faults, near the Rio Grande Rift and on volcanic slopes. Los Alamos that had a fire in 2000 which sent smoke filled with deadly depleated uranium into the air we breathe. Los Alamos that plans to process plutonium; the most dangerous element, capable of spontaneous ignition. A plutonium fire in Los Alamos breaching containment would render the wild Taos area uninhabitable.

My connection to the space around me can be described as nothing less than intense and raw. I saw this song/video this morning and it brought tears down to my chest with the futility that we have felt trying to fight the mines, the air traffic and nuclear plants. What are we doing to this world? What?

Rachelle Van Zanten - My Country (Official Video) from Taylor F. on Vimeo.