Everyday can't be a paddling day. When the wind is blowing hard, it's
time to resort to the gears on the bike. Out where there are no
visible address markers, gate signs help you find your way.
Open Oklahoma prairie.
Name something that takes whatever it wants, wherever it wants, whenever
it wants, with or without permission, takes, takes, and takes, and never
gives anything back. That, of course, would be the oil and gas industry.
Years and years of the state legislature giving the industry concessions,
tax breaks, and incentives have left the state 900 million dollars in debt.
Part of that is the lobby arm-twisting, and part of it is the stupidity of
the legislators allowing themselves to be led by the nose, or corrupt enough
to be bought off. In any event, education suffers, infrastructure
suffers, emergency services suffer, everything suffers, but when oil and gas
is asked to chip in and pay their way, to show appreciation for all they
have been given for free, they still want more. So, here, while they can't
afford to help rebuild the roads that their heavy, oversized truck loads
destroy, they can still afford to put yet another pipeline across
private land.
There are no end of dirt roads. These sometimes allow the only chance to
see sights never visible from the paved highways.
When a highway is paved, what happens to the dirt road grader?
Sometimes it is just pulled off to the side of the road to provide
decades of interest to break up the endless prairie.
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