~Miles of irrigated cornfields
~Scary feedlots and bumper stickers that say: “Pelosi Happens”
~Scarier Maximum Security Prisons literally in the middle of nowhere
~Billboards for the current female Governor, which features the Rosie the Riveter image overlaid with the quote: “Doing the job the Feds won’t do!”
~McDonald's restaurants that only have grilled chicken available, as opposed to crispy chicken
~Four immigration checkpoints with signs that warn of drug-sniffing (and human-sniffing) dogs on I-8 driving West towards California. Instead we find 18 year old boys who wave us white women by without question.
As we drive west, seeking to muddle our privileged life on the east coast, certain realities become apparent. Sights of environmental degradation and human incarceration are often hidden from the scenic overlooks and river roads of New York, Massachusetts and Vermont. In Arizona, for example, facts we often desire to ignore are now magnified in the hypervisible starkness of the desert. I was surprised to see so much suburban sprawl and irrigation going on in and south of Phoenix. The unsustainable use of water and chemical pesticides leaves Mexico dry and supports a special kind of American dream world, where corn and soy beans grow in the desert and water comes from a source 1,000 miles away. I see this landscape and can’t think of our fresh water in the Great Lakes threatened by not just local stupidity, but national greed. Barbara Kingsolver echoes this in her book, which we’re listening to while driving: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Seeing the desert climate change around her, Kingsolver and her family decide to move to Western Virginia to start their own farm.
