Having grown up on and around farms, I feel most at home when I have animals around. I enjoy taking care of animals and find great pleasure in seeing my children interact with and help care for the animals as well. I always hoped that I would be able to live on a farm when I grew up because life on the farm seemed like the best kind of life. I always dreamed of having horses and cows, dogs and cats, room to roam and plenty of trees to climb. HAVING animals was my childhood dream. BEING a caged animal myself never once occurred to me, until now.
From the time we are able to understand words, we are taught about the world around us. What it is and why it is, are topics of daily conversation as well as subjects in school, at church and in the workplace. I saw an example of what I am talking about just the other day as I was driving across the country. A sign on a road construction project informed me that the new road was being built by “Your tax dollars” in the form of Federal, State and Local taxes. Each one had a number beside it to indicate exactly how much each group was contributing to the project. I wondered how much we had personally contributed to that project. I also wondered why no one asked me whether or not I thought it was a good idea. Then I had to laugh at myself. Imagine someone on the street holding you up for your money. You give it to him and he asks you if it's OK if he uses it to pay his children's college tuition. No, I can't imagine it either.
The other day, I was listening to a lecture by a Naturalist. She was teaching boy scouts about the world around them. Plants, animals, rivers and ecosystems were some of the topics of discussion. In the process of the lecture she brought out a map of our beautiful state. It had two colors on it. She asked the children if they knew what the different colors represented. One smart boy raised his hand and gave the answer: “That's where people live.” He was right. The map showed inhabited and uninhabited land in Idaho. She then informed them of how fortunate they were to live in a state where there were so many National Parks. She said they were lucky to be able to see these natural wonders right in their own 'back yard' so-to-speak. She then proudly announced to the class that more than seventy-five percent of our state is Federally owned and run. She taught them how lucky we are to have so many natural resources which we are lucky enough to have managed for us by our benevolent leaders.
On a recent trip to a Federally-owned National tourist site I was amazed at how much money had been spent to make it 'tourist-friendly'. Movies, pictures, artifacts, souvenirs and guides combined with the finest buildings money could buy, making a truly stunning experience at a place that would otherwise have been merely a big rock with someone's name carved on it. When I was a child, that is how it was. You went there, you saw the rock, you read the historical marker and you got in your car and drove away. Now, you have to park almost half a mile from the actual site, are corralled into the Edifice by guides that feel like guards, told exactly what to think about the events and people surrounding the big rock, given a head full of stuff about how lucky you are to have people doing all of this for you, asked to donate money, led by the hand to the actual site, guarded by the guards and surveyed constantly by security cameras, and if your toe goes out of bounds an alarm sounds to alert the guards to your behavior. Finally, you are guided off the premises by way of the gift shop where you can find more literature about how lucky you are and more pictures of things you will never see but are so lucky to have.
Where's my feed. I'm going back to my cage to ponder on how lucky I am.
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