September 12, 2005

• When I look out of my window, I see cows and tractors and mountains and the sea. Urban life is worse than its reputation, that's why I moved all the way up here.
• What I want out of rural life is fast internet and a decent grocery store. Give me those, and I'd live just about wherever.
• Why yes, I know where my pee-pee goes. Behind the garage, right on the southwest corner of the privacy fence, where it drives my neighbor dogs positively batshit.
• In Austin, the watersheds are marked with roadsigns: "You are Entering the Waller Creek Watershed." Sewers and drains in the area are labeled "NO DUMPING: DRAINS TO CREEK". For the Barton Creek Watershed, the recharge and contributing zones are even labeled.
• Taking this quiz, I can tell you one thing: I am bad to the biome.
• Don't think ye can live in mountain country, which I do, and not be aware of where runoff comes from/goes. Ditching is a yearly task, as is making sure gravel roads don't gully out or become so washboarded as to be difficult to drive.. Not a city dweller. I live far enough away from densely populated areas that when I do run into someone I'm usually pleased to see them. Whereas in cities I'm always looking for a quiet place to get away from everyone and from the unending sounds of traffic, sirens, voices, other folk's taste in music, etc. Always glad to leave cities, which seem to lead even the best folk to ignore what's going on around them, and to avoid talking to other people.
• Yeah, rural living is so good for the environment, what with having to trek around in cars everywhere and having no public transit! Yessirree, as long as we don't have to live around the effects of human pollution, it doesn't exist and we're being real enviro-friendly-like!
• I quite agree, bees. Having a city/country split lifestyle, I found that I absolutely smoked all the questions for my country half, but could barely pull a 50% for my city half. Hence my "urban insulation" hypothesis. B-b-b-b-b-badddd, b-b-b-b-b-badddd... damn you SB
• It's quite a bit different having someone to take care of it for you than having your own sewer lagoon or septic field. When you can point to where the shit goes (usually marked by the lusher undergrowth) and have to worry about what happens if Things Go Wrong with it, you tend to think about it more.
• Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat - Pies and how did they sustain themselves? - Relentless bitterness and cynicism
• You know my parents?
• I supplanted them during my northward migration after the last ice age.
• They were alright about it though.
• I'm better for Toronto than for where I live now. But some of the questions have little to do with ecological awareness and more to do with historical - if you live in London,UK, I wouldn't be surprised if you know a lot more about the native inhabitants than anywhere in North America. Also, native edible plants? For me, maize, potato, squash --- wait, those aren't native to the area. They were brought here by people. If it's a cultivar, it's probably not "native".
• This is the stupidest fucking thing I ever heard of in at least two days. What a bunch of fucking crap. Let me smash something.
• Didn't get a very high score on the test, did you Chyren? Here, you can smash this beer.
• sandspider, if you could not see your neighbors' houses, yet there was a foo-foo market selling Peet's coffee two miles away and you had plain ol' DSL would that work for you? That's how it is where I live. My watershed (alone, not counting the watercourse its stream is a tributary to) supports fourteen people and I am at the top of the stream. Like beeswacky I re-finish the road, spring and fall. There are pileated and acorn woodpeckers here. Santa Cruz mountains, northern California. My town has -shrunk- by almost a third, I have no idea why, since 1990. Maybe it's the two meters (actually 74 inches) of rain we got last year. Maybe it's the fact that power goes out and is apt to stay that way for several days - not that you live here without a big propane tank, a big water tank and gas -everything-. Maybe it's the redwoods falling across the roads when the wind whips up. I don't know, all those things are kind of fun for me.
• Which town, jet_silver? Ex-Scotts Valley here. Hardly the mountains, but still. And have you noticed that SC people comment that "It never rains this much around here" every winter?
• tracicle, it's Ben Lomond. Yah, they say "wow, a rainy winter" every winter. It's a ritual, like CDF saying in a dry year "fire risk is worse than normal because everything's dry", and in a wet year "fire risk is worse than normal because there has been so much fuel growth". These are just silly things that in my view add to the charm of the place. When stuff really goes wrong people stop complaining and get it fixed, and all that fussing is just a topic for conversation.
• These are great questions. I feel like I should have learned the answer to most if not all at a very young age. Time for me to start researching.