When I decided to tell civilization to shove it, and went to hunting up a piece of dirt where I could spend the rest of my life listening to the whistle of the red-tailed hawk and watching the play of light and shadow with the passage of the days and the seasons, I studied every map I could lay hands on to find a spot where my family and I would be left alone.

And I damn near made it. My wife bailed on me, my kids married or moved to the East Coast, I built my hideout where I was utterly alone for 13 years. Then half the commuters west of the Mississippi and east of L.A. showed up and bought land I thought would never hit the market.

If it weren’t a serious misdemeanor, I would like to shoot every last one of them stone dead.

City sorts and bedroom community dwellers clearly have no appreciation of how seriously antisocial country folk like us can be, and how hard we have labored, how many of the perquisites of communal living we coldbloodedly forfeit, to find solitude.

Don’t you get it? We don’t want you around.

After last week’s monologue, I anticipated a sabbatical from this extended stretch of self-pity, and then I read the Friday Tucson Citizen and saw how utterly hostile the ruling class has become toward the hermetic subculture.

The lead story on the front page told how state highway planners have decided to commence an official inquiry into bypassing Tucson with a four-lane divided highway around the north side of the Catalina Mountains and up the San Pedro River Valley, to hook up with I-10 again around Willcox.

Well ain’t that just dandy. All the wildlife and desert rats, the historic sites and endangered species – among which I include humanoids such as myself – that willingly gave up pizza from Domino’s, health care from anything outside of Johnson & Johnson, just about every advancement of human kind since Lee surrendered at Appomattox, can now look forward to having the quiet of the eventide, the stillness of sunrise, the scent of creosote after a rain and dew on sycamore leaves, shattered by the bark of Kenworth and the ceaseless howl of traffic.

Trust me on this one: Someone is going to die, bloody and ugly, for the cause of the traffic planner.

It won’t be me pulling the trigger. I make jest of tragedy, but I have this outlet for my anger and sense of outraged justice.

But consider the simmering soul of a man who has cast everything he ever owned or hoped to own on one last shot at surviving by himself, away from all the madness that sickens him in the city. You don’t have to be nuts to live out where your breathing is the only reminder of human habitation, but it does make it more comfortable.

An axiom of country life tells us that city folk tend to be neurotic; country cousins go psychotic. Why live life by half-measures?

So here’s our survivalist cousin, finally got the bunker weather-tight and his crops in the ground, and what the hell is that noise? D-Something Caterpillars blading virgin stands of saguaro to make way for the Paved Path of Progress.

Where’s my AK-47?

I had to laugh to read that S.L. Schorr is running his mouth as usual, as point man for the “feasibility and needs” study to be conducted by the Arizona Department of Transportation and then submitted to the ADOT board, of which Schorr is vice chairman, for its edification in selecting a consultant to make recommendations on the next step of the process . . . and so forth and so on, in the danse macabre that ultimately wrecks and wreaks and ruins the world we live in.

Si Schorr has been behind just about every bad idea that’s come down the pike hereabouts for the past half-century.

Down the pike. What could be more apropos?

The idea, according to ADOT, is to siphon off as much heavy truck traffic as passes through Tucson on its nonstop ride to the Florida coast, stopping only for diesel, deep-dish apple pie with soft-serve ice cream and teenage prostitutes. Where are they going to find enough of all this to meet the need, between Oracle Junction and Texas Canyon?

Answer me this one: Why are we already at the stage where consultants are being considered and high-priced staff opinions are being committed to maps and documents, and this is the first word the public hears of this wretched notion?

If I were the suspicious sort, I’d say the fix is in.

Truth be told, Jeff Smith is the suspicious sort. He may be reached at (520) 455-5667 or jeffyboy@wildblue.net.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 12:02 am and is filed under Opinion. Tags for this post: Columnist/Guest, Jeff Smith, Opinion-Sci/Tech, Opinion-Sci/Tech-Columnist/Guest, page-a12, Sci/Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.