Looking Down a Sendero
Blogs come in all varieties.
There are blogs about celebrities and blogs about buying things. Product reviews and healthcare advice; there
are blogs about love and even about hate. What makes someone want to start a blog is
difficult to say but I think those reasons stem from many places. Perhaps most of all it’s about wanting to
share things with others.
I believe things like blogs have nudged aside the novel and the
non-fiction book. That’s not to suggest those
forms of communication are not popular but blogs give readers immediate access
to so many things freely and—given our increasingly limited attention spans as
well as the demands on our time—blogs provide education or emotional comfort in
just a few words. That’s important in
this hectic age. A friend told me the
other day that Woods Roamer is not your average outdoor, hiking, backpacking,
product-reviews blog. He said people come
to this blog looking for one of two things.
“They want to learn the ways of the woods from someone who’s lived it…and
they want to know about the experience of the woods from a man who feels it in
his heart.” He told me to keep that in
mind and so I will.
Back in the mid-1980s I lived in a 26-foot Avion trailer at the
edge of a large lake. In the evenings I’d
look out across the water at mountains to the southwest. I’d see storms building with lightning pulsating
downward over the distant peaks. Now and
then I’d hear thunder bellowing across the flats. From that small trailer I wrote news articles
that made national headlines and were discussed on everything from the major
television networks to talk radio. When
I’d roam the cow trails in the nearby woods I’d often think about the irony of
talking to the world from a tiny trailer bordered by water on one side and
thick brush on the other. All these
years later I guess things haven’t changed much for me. As I write these notes I see several coveys
of bobwhite quail pecking and scratching in the dirt out back. Three ghost doves are trying to push each
other aside at one of the feeding stations.
And pyrrhuloxias and green jays are perched on the branches of a
granjeno. Several painted buntings came
to visit a while ago. In the night I’ll
hear great-horned owls and screech owls in the woods behind the house. I’ll listen to coyotes singing melancholy songs
as well as pauraques whistling. I
sometimes take long midnight walks down the narrow road leading away from this
place just to enjoy the quiet and stillness.
I think about the people who read this blog around the
world. Name a country and there is somebody
there who has read Woods Roamer. I have
readers in the Ukraine and Russia and in Malaysia as well. There are readers in Australia, Argentina,
Spain, Germany, Sweden and many other countries. And yet here I am in this little cabin in Deep
South Texas where my nearest neighbor is almost four miles away. This region is in the news a lot lately. I’m not sure what to make of what’s going on sixty
miles south of us and about thirty-five miles to the west. It all seems a bit odd. All of a sudden people decide to flee en mass
to South Texas? It’s not as if there is
a sudden revolution or a monumental collapse in those Central American countries. In fact, things were the same five years ago
and ten years ago and twenty years ago. So
why the influx now unless somebody somewhere is manipulating things. Regardless, I’ve witnessed firsthand what
happens along the Rio Grande when people swim to the US side. There are trash heaps like hillocks made of
plastic bags and inner tubes and discarded clothes and tossed soda cans and
nylon rope and glass bottles and a hundred other items that poison the ground
killing the trees and nearly all the wild creatures that live there. I’ve seen the bleached shells of tortoises
and the remains of raccoons and bobcats that either choked to death when they
were snared by the trash or died of poisoning when they attempted to eat the
refuse. That’s a story you won’t hear on
the nightly news. No immigration reform
advocate wants you to know that truth.
Even this far north there are areas where the trash is disgusting. Known smuggling trails are littered with
everything from tossed shoes and tin cans to Santa Muerte emblems. We’ve
been warned by the US Border Patrol to be on guard for criminals and Central
American gang members and even terrorists who might use the current chaos on
the Rio Grande as a means to sneak into the country. So we keep an eye out and sometimes at night
we hear or see BP helicopters flying along gas pipeline right-of-ways a few
miles to the east and west. By the way,
those natural gas pipelines have proven to be a significant problem for many
people. The corporations that own those
pipelines have no qualms about destroying ranchland for their own profit. Politicians have stolen the land via eminent
domain so that their contributors in the oil and gas industry can have the land
for themselves. If the land means
anything to you then you’ll understand how tragic it is when these
multi-national conglomerates arrive and rape the earth and pollute the groundwater
as well. Some ranchers to the west of us
are at their wits end. I wonder how long
their patience will last before things start to happen. Those things sometimes make the news but the
National Media is a fickle bunch that runs around chasing event after event yet
never really comprehending what’s actually going on.
It seems that people who arrive at this blog want to know
more about doing things for themselves than about what to buy at the
store. A lot of them also share my love
of nature and my passion for wanting to save it. Yes, I include politics in my posts and I get
mail from both the Right and Left regarding some of my statements. So be it.
For me it’s all about the land and by that I mean nature. I advocate for wilderness, plain and
simple. If you’ve bothered to read any
of my books you know what I’ve seen happen in these parts.
I appreciate the emails I get from those of you who love the backwoods. I thank you for sharing your thoughts about
nature and your ideas about preserving it.
There are more things to impart to you about living in the brushlands and
about making things for yourself. About
being self-sufficient; and focusing on the quality of your life and not the
quantities in your life. About the
importance of family and truth and about protecting what has been given to you
for free—that which has no voice of its own unless you speak for it. Whether it is the bobcat or the mesquite
tree, the hawk or the tortoise; unless you stand up for them no one else will. One more thing: I’m always eager to hear from
you so don’t forget to drop me a line at thewoodsroamer@gmail.com
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