Strange to say, what with democracy crumbling around us, theocratic conservatism threatening to overwhelm the Supreme Court, and the climate striking back at humanity in many disastrous ways, I spent almost all of my time today working on the Facebook group I just set up (Indiana Natural Areas, same as the page I maintained previously. I intended to retain and keep online all the information I had garnered on natural areas in the state, and turn it into a forum where people could discuss the places they visited and post their stories and photos, while offering as complete as possible an accounting of the natural areas remaining in a heavily industrialized and heavily agricultural state, which doesn’t seem to leave much room for nature.
To those used to the mountains and oceans and wide open spaces of other areas of the US, Indiana’s natural beauty seems like small potatoes, and it is, in many ways. But we have rather more small potatoes than one might expect, and their beauty is found in smaller and subtler scenes and places and flora and fauna. I like to celebrate it, much as I am uncomfortable with the conservative and rather narrow-minded culture that exists. If there is a bubble that prevents people from understanding the entirety of the US, it isn’t a bubble existing on the coasts or in major metropolitan areas; it’s in the small towns and rural areas where everybody is like everyone around them in most ways. The people on the coasts – especially the west coast – are mainly made up of people who couldn’t be kept down on the farm once they saw Paris (or New York or San Francisco). Those are the areas most free of the bubble, because so many of their people came from the small-town, rural bubble.
Still, it’s a quieter life and certainly a more affordable one. There are virtues here, as well as the many vices – and by vices I refer to racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, anti-LGBTQIA+ and anti-science/intellectualism.
And I really think that the more time people spend in nature, the more likely their minds might be to opening up.
Weather Report: 82/63, Dewpoint 60, Humidity 74%, Barometer 29.81
A Diary of Interesting Times 