A Long View

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

At a dinner party Pat and Franz were having, the conversation revolved around how the area has changed with increasing population and ensuing development. It turned out our hosts were the longest time residents in the group. Someone asked Franz, “What do you miss about the Santa Fe of fifty years ago?”

Franz considered the question for a moment. “Air quality.” He said. Everyone was a little surprised with the answer, after all most any day visibility is around sixty miles. Franz went on. “The days we have when it’s so crystal clear you can see the trees on the ridgelines in the Jemez?” We all knew what he was talking about. Those days happen every once in a while and are stellar. The mountains, the sky, the sunshine ring like a bell. “That used to be every day,” he concluded. For a moment we were all pretty quiet.

Since 1960, world population has more than doubled.

Each of us who is old enough to remember back forty or fifty years can probably think of something like this. Personally, I miss long stretches of undisturbed shoreline around the lakes of New Hampshire. And of course there are many other very real changes, not especially for the better – loss of population and diversity of wildlife, loss of a dark night sky, greater car and air traffic, less peace and quiet.

And yet we continue with more and more and more… of us. We turn to technology to bail us out, but it hasn’t and there’s no real indication it will. What is it about us, that we think we can go on this way?

Gordon Bunker