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In 2005, someone moved to Nevada every 13 seconds. While we were sleeping in Gardnerville under a quickly thickening blanket of snow, the comet probe passed over Tonopah, and I said that we should move there so you could see the stars and satellites at night, and I could ride my horses in wide open spaces without engine sounds to startle them. But then I would have to run Keno bets at a casino and you would have to pump gas. We would have to put our college educations on the back of a truck, ship them to Yucca Mountain to be sealed in canisters deep underground. We would have to mend our own fences, or just not put up fences, and trust that we can exist in peace and zero-growth for a few years before the mass exodus from California spills over the Sierra further into the Great Basin, paving away all sagebrush to make room for more people in search of space to ride their loud engines, a place to shoot bullets at anything that moves, a desert oasis where any man can get away with murder. My Home Before My home before the neighbors’ wake: Lush green lawns – no sun; no yellow dandelion weed. Cool breeze, the silence of it touching the leaves. Horses graze – so quiet, so calm, not a single sound to fear, sky lights up, and a rooster crows for all the world to hear – night is gone, day is near. The first truck bangs and rumbles past the house, out come the noise-makers, in goes the mouse, dogs begin barking, and nature pulls on her blouse. Winter and Construction Only when you tired of the constant roar of engines blazing their asphalt trail past our windows did you bring home a real estate magazine. Together we turned page after page, pretending to be rich enough to buy a forty-acre lot with a six-stall barn and a two-story, four bedroom mansion. We'd sell our history for a little more space, a place where neighbors can't ruin our days with loud power tools and ATVs, can't ruin our nights with loud parties, can't ruin our years with endless construction. Right now our bay windows face a once deserted rural road that's become a truck route for those who wish to bypass town. Our privately-owned dead-end dirt road is trespassed daily, used as a turnabout by truckers and strangers who've lost their way. My dogs and horses are viewed as animals in a free petting zoo, even target practice for bored city boys brought to the country for fresh air and given paintball blasters for entertainment. We were fortunate enough to have found heaven and lost it. The best years of our children's lives were spent growing up in this secluded valley where the wind was our only conversation. But the land mongers have found us, and now the best we get is the endless beep of earth movers backing up, pushing forward, backing up well into the fourth snowfall, well into the too late hours of a fading milky way. |