As I was reading Beagles's story of how he became Laird of the Freehold that John Denver song, Wild Montana Skies kept ring in my ears. In the montage that accompanied the song I see Beagles's wild ride down to the lower forty in a battered pickup with a case of Dinty Moore rocking in the bed. This was not a retreat it was a reconnoiter. I know Beagles has told the story before but what was the town in Alaska that you left from?
I tried gardening on it, but eventually decided that it was more trouble than it was worth.
See that is not what gardening is about. Paying myself minimum wage it costs me a lot more plucking tomatoes and hot peppers off the vine than strolling over to the Jewel and buying a bag of them. The time spent isn't really work, it is kind of fun. And there is this thing, a little like Beagles spreading that handful of tobacco, of oneness with the universe in planting the seed, watching the sprout, beholding the blossom, watching the green fruit swell and turning ripe and red. That's what gardening is all about. Maybe it's a city thing, being exiled from The Garden to the wicked city and clinging to that last vestige.
Speaking of Eden. the fallacy in calling hunting the easy life and farming the hard life a fallacy in that it mixes the present with the ancient. In ancient times the land was open and free and it did not take that long to spear something that you could eat on for a few days. Of course after a few days the meat would spoil and so there was no way you could build a wealth of meat.
Grain however does not spoil and you can get rich off it. You can build a granary and hire men to guard it paying with that very grain so that nobody else can have any of it. And it takes a lot of land to grow the grain so that has to be fenced off and you hire some more of those guards to keep the hunters away and after awhile all the land is taken up with fences and the hunter has no choice but to give up the wild Sumerian skies for long hours of grubbing in the dirt.
This was great for civilization in general but not so hot for the descendants of all those ground grubbers. But Beagles, in the present day has escaped all that, and he deserves a salute.
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