Comments on: The World is Constantly Changing

By: Steve Williams

Steve Williams — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 23:56:00 +0000

bill: I wonder what our country's landscape would look like now if there were no state and national parks and forests. Someday I hope to see the Olympic National Park.

doug: Generica is a great word! So appropriate for the commercial sameness surrounding us. Blindfold me and drop me in the parking lot of a strip mall somewhere in America and I would have no idea where I was.

As long as you don't build a shopping center somewhere when you move you should be able to sneak in and become a local in twenty to thirty years. In the East it takes longer. I know a family who has lived on a farm here for over 50 years and the neighbors still refer to their place by the name of the previous farm family. Localness comes hard and slow in some places.

By: Doug K.

Doug K. — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 20:02:00 +0000

I’ve watched what you describe take place over the last 25 years here in the Phoenix, AZ area and now it’s coming to my little down 40 miles south of Phoenix: Walled communities, strip malls, a new Home Depot and a Lowe’s. As I drive across town all I see is “Generica.” The view of the rugged desert mountains are all but gone. I guess you could say, since I’m not a native of this town, that I’m part of the problem. No matter, retirement is just around the corner and I’ll get out and get to somewhere that’s open spaces again. And no doubt the locals there, wherever “there” will be, will bemoan the arrival of another city guy cluttering up their place.

By: Bill Sommers

Bill Sommers — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 04:25:00 +0000

No, you don't have to ride far to see the constant change. And it bothers me.
That is the sole reason that my favorite areas to ride are in the Olympic National Park. The Dept. of Interior will not allow the preditors to develop the unchanged landscape that is my back yard.
I'm so thankful for that.

Have fun,
Bill