Thousands of years later, we're still sitting around the campfire [UPDATE]

darksyde at daily kos has a front-page post up, waxing eloquent on his specialty, natural history... i was reminded of something when i read the first paragraph...

At last summer grudgingly gave way to autumn here in Florida. The season changed officially on September 23, but practically it was just a few hours ago that the first crisp Fall night fell on a grateful DarkSyde Manor. To celebrate, I’ve set alight a couple of logs in our neglected and mostly ornamental fire place. Here in the flickering solitude afforded at four in the morning, I’m reminded of the coming Holidays and Winters past: there are few moments more simple and satisfying than basking warm and dry in front of a good, roaring fire, while outside the weather is frightful.

the stereotypical picture of primitive man often has the same basic elements - a cave, a neanderthal-looking creature with a sloped forehead, scantily clothed in an animal skin, standing next to a fire ringed with rocks, over which a haunch of an unspecified animal is roasting on a spit... ya know what...? we're still living the same way, only instead of the fire, we gather around our furnaces, fireplaces, and wood stoves, all of which burn something... we ride in our cars, our buses, our trains, our airplanes, all of which burn something... we shower in water warmed by our water heaters, eat food preserved in our refrigerators and cooked on our gas or electric stoves, all of which either burn something or are powered by electricity obtained by burning something, the direct product of the blazing infernos that rage on the interior of our coal and gas-fired power plants... (have you ever taken a tour of a coal-fired power plant...? if not, i encourage you do to so... you will learn a great deal...)

yes, after all these thousands of years, we are still sitting around the campfire...

[UPDATE]

well, doggone it, the thing that inspired me to put up this post, besides darksyde, was the front page story in today's paper about dirt and trailbikers making a goddam mess out of open land... not only do they tear up the landscape, near where i happen to live, there is also a significant amount of noise pollution... you can always hear those little engines, revving at a high pitch, as the riders negotiate narrow dirt trails cut through sagebrush at high speed... it seems like the only thing that qualifies as outdoor fun these days is if you have something with an ENGINE on it that's BURNING some kind of fuel...

The number of dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles nearly tripled across the country since 1993, a phenomenon critics and land managers said comes at increasing cost to a vulnerable landscape.

From the forested Sierra to the rolling desert terrain east of Reno, ragged tread scars criss-cross the hills, meadows are torn up by spinning tires and conflicts are increasing between those who enjoy motorized recreation and others who see it as a threat.

Nature is under wheeled assault, experts said.

"It shouldn't be like this," said Frank Machler, off-highway vehicle coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service's Carson Ranger District. "It's just invasive is what it is. It's destructive."

By and large, Machler said, the majority of OHV riders stick to roads where the environmental damage from their sport is minimal.

But some don't, and the resulting damage often is severe.

i can hear 'em now as i sit here typing this on a gorgeous late fall afternoon, still warm enough to have the window open...

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