Letter from Slim Wolfe
Geography – September 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill….
Plainly, the mountain doesn’t give a hoot what you call it or who gets the credit, nor do dead soldiers seem likely to take offense, however, the backers of this presumptuous KIAMIA notion have got some more free publicity out of the squabble in your letters column. Seems to me they ought to call off the whole affair for lack of interest and leave the mountain in peace.
I, however, have a heap of planer shavings and sawdust out back, which I hereby dub “Mount MODD” — an acronym for Mothers of Draft Dodgers, to honor those mothers and fathers who explained to their kids that constructive solutions are more useful than gun-toting arrogance. I can maybe accommodate seventy-five people for the ribbon-slicing ceremony, but it might be a good idea to call first, particularly if you’re bringing fifes and drums.
The article on hay-making seemed conspicuously lacking in the concept of choice: are these ranchers locked into the petroleum-hay-cattle cycle or could they choose a more ingenious and effective way to make their land productive? Darwin taught us that species are capable of radical adaptation in just three or four generations, and humans have surely proved this in the last 80 or 100 years. So, is it time to quit struggling against the obstacles and get into jackrabbit-ranching or something a little more friendly to the land and rancher alike? Are we so hidebound in tradition that we’ll work ourselves to death and exhaust our remaining fossil fuels in pursuit of the holy steak and pot-roast?
Not that many years ago the bulk of humanity was busting a sweat with sickles and hoes, flails and grindstones. Now the earth has to carry the load of a mushrooming class of middlemen, salesmen, software promoters, poodle-shampooers, and who-knows- what-else. We flatter ourselves and call it progress, but maybe history defines itself on its own terms, not on ours.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
