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After failing twice to get over the
Sierras
yesterday we spent the night in a motel at a much lower elevation and woke
to falling wet snow. The motel was empty because the weather's been so
shitty--more precip already than they typically get all year in
Glennville.
It was lucky we turned back when we did. We dropped
out of the fog into green grass and sunshine as we took a backroad to Bakersfield
where they're still pumping oil out of the earth, the bucolic curves of hilly
pastureland yielding suddenly to scars of industry--the derricks, pipelines,
and refineries that make "Great American Roadtrips" possible, if not inevitable.
On the trainride down an elderly Irish couple had
complained about having to see unpicturesque scenery such as stripmines and
clearcuts. "But that's why they laid these tracks in the first place," I
explained. History is painful; most prefer Disney. I have to embrace it,
go in to get out. We finally made it over at
Tehachapi
where the trees grow tipped in the direction of the wind and a forest of
turbines spins out enough energy to power 3 million households at peak.
Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Mexico
the wounded earth gushes blood in a black tide killing
all it touches. I bear some of the reponsibility for that--one measure of
which is dollars spent on gas. Damn. |
