Hey, we shall inherit the earth

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Celebrated Earth Day out with Patrick on a trail ride near Mill Creek. Bordering National Forest it’s in the n the heart of Amish arm Country. Hey!” shouted a farmer; he invokes “PP”, the private property principle. When it comes to beauty and nature, I’m with Bakunin – property is theft, at least when the receiver of the stolen Indian property is just hogging the view. We’ll see how fast GaZi and company feel like going on this nice soft turf,. Before the landowner and I could get very far along on our debate over the proposition that the revolution had been for the pursuit of happiness rather than for property, he started worrying that his canine was making a break for for it. He started calling his dog JB, who was running quietly along behind us. Sometimes dogs would rather run with horses than bark at them. Patrick always brings Jack his jack russell wherever he goes. That this little dog has survived horses and miles he’s done is a major miracle… but I digress.  JB trotted along , until its owner, driving parallel in his pickup, caught up with us all and coaxed his dog back.

After this hit and run, we had a great ride for 5 miles or so along the creek, and through the fields, orchards and  and all around beauty that defines Mill Creek.. Being in Amish Country , this part of the valley does not suffer from much human pressure, and it’s not bristling with keep out indicators, nor so many abandoned appliances, not too many shotgun shells and bald tires half-sunk into the soil.

Sometimes the water ran so close to the top of its banks that it seemed like a gentle, winding stream. It went alongside a wild, uncultivated reserve, and past an alpaca farm – shorn. Their scrawny bodies and ostrich necks topped by a poof of furry untrimmed head make them more startlingly more ludicrous looking than those frou frou Park Avenue poodles. In a couple of places along the streams we had to be creative to find a crossing. Following one, the soft  ground encouraged G-man to exaggerate the hidden possibilities of danger lurking in the creek’s overgrowth on one side  into justification for a fast gaiting charge for half a mile,  until we emerged at an untravelled road/  A n an old bridge over the creek allowed us to  cross and head back down and loop back.

Sometimes on this ride and others in farming areas , when you look out across a field of some tall ripening grassy crop like wheat or rye, a blackbird suddenly flies up out of the nowhere and followed by the others, but the flock is so numerous and the flight so short that for a little while some birds are still appearing at the same time others are disappearing. Another spook opportunity for our menagerie.

At 8 mpg I added a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere getting here. Trot on friends, trot on.

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
Native American Proverb