let's go driving in the car, car.

Let's go driving in an automobile
Let's take a ride in a car.
Listen to the sounds we all can hear
As we travel near and far
Vroom, vr-vroom, vr-vroom
Vroom, vroom, vroom
Beep, be-beep, be-beep, beep
Swish, sw-swish, sw-swish,
Swish, swish, swish
La, la, la, la, la.

So yesterday i go driving in the car; needing to go to Missoula for a meeting and such. Now I-90 between here and Missoula covers a bit more than 200 miles most of which transcects the Rocky Mountains through the panhandle of Idaho and the eerily strange Clark Fork River canyon(strange because as you tend to perceive yourself driving downhill to Missoula you are in fact driving up the river flow). Much of the road passes through a number of small mining towns surrounded by the usual assortments of tailings, rusted hulks of equipment, touristy little antique efforts, and the hideous ugliness of partially restored dessimated landscapes. What regrown forests there have been since the 1940's are either burned, being clear cut again, or are too young to be cut. Why i mention this is that we(esp liberal enviro types) all too often overlook the highway itself in our quest to go somewhere to enjoy beautiful vistas and access to natural playlands.

This summer i spent a great deal of time, as usual, driving up and down the pacific coast from one music festival to another, one concert to the next. Usually i had friends or my son along, and we would often comment on the various clearcuts, destruction of habitat, ruination of view sheds, expansive housing and industrial development and so forth. But yesterday i chose to pay particular attention to the road. The interstate and US highway system has consumed more forest and viewshed, destroyed more stream flows and species habitats, killed more species(check a windshield lately) than logging and mining combined. Thousands of squaremiles of north america lays beneath concrete and asphalt and more is being overburdened each day. Next time you drive through a national forest on a highway and remark about the clearcut on the sides, remind your self that were it not for the clear cutting, the bulldozing, the mashing smashing tearing up of the earth creating huge destruction of stream and river habitats, you wouldn't be driving along so happily being able to see the forest in the first place. We not only paved paradise to put up the parking lot, we paved it to get from parking lot to parking lot. We destroyed it to get to it, we ransacked it to walk in it.