Across the U.S.....

You know, exiting the boundaries of the farm and venturing into the rest of the world is always a little bit shocking but I gotta say, leaving Pat's beautiful homestead in the mountains increased the shock level by A LOT especially considering we left it to drive ourselves West across the Southern United States! Sheesh, I don't recommend that for anyone who has a mind towards noticing the way that our society is well just slightly functioning in the most backwards, inefficient way possible. I was trying to make my mind wrap around the crazy things I was seeing - pre-fab houses on the backs of semi trailers moving down the highway, giant fields of just harvested cotton smack dab in the middle of a town where you must have to know a secret password to find fresh food - these sights caught between the bumpers of cars the size of boats. Now, I know that this exists, that this is how our society works, that's the whole point of what we're doing, but from the point of view of the U.S interstate, the world seems pretty bleak. We're like polar bears who have decided to only eat peaches. What!?!?!? I mean, everything we do seems to be completely the opposite of efficient or sensical. And the apathy - oh the apathy....
From the point of view of the interstate (and I'm not saying that this is necessarily the best way to view the world) people don't seem to want to analyze how their actions are going to effect the lives of their children and certainly not their children's children - but it's gonna be science fiction come to life in my opinion - war, scarcity, death. We don't seem too believe that we need to function in a way that is at all in line with how the earth functions (like those peach-eating polar bears), we'll just use up all the oil, all the trees, all the land and not think about what the hell our kid's are gonna do. And not just in terms of what are they gonna use for resources but also, what's gonna make their lives enjoyable, calm, fulfilling 'cause I can't believe that living in some kind of futuristic bubble is gonna be too nice. At least, as I say, that's how it looks from the godforsaken interstate.
However, thank god for the Santa Fe Farmers Market and the New York Times!!!!! By that I mean, the Santa Fe Farmers's Market is beeeeeeautiful. And when we got to my mom's the New York Times had a great article about urban farming in NYC, Detroit and elsewhere. To my relief, I was reminded of all the awesome people who are doing positive, innovative things (not, apparently the gov't of Burma, but, well, at the farmers market?!?!?!?) and soon we're heading out to someone just like that to work on her farm for a month, phew.
Now how's that for ending on a positive note?
(p.s. I couldn't figure out how to put a caption on the photos above, so the first one is a big ol' dead-looking field in Arkansas and the other two are the Santa Fe Farmers Market - hand-spun mohair and oyster mushrooms)