environment

Yesterday afternoon we took an hour or so to walk in what we like to call "Spartanburg's Central Park," the Edwin Griffin Preserve (The Cottonwood Trail) on the Lawson's Fork. It's the closest public space to our house, and we get out to it as much as possible.

We live in the piedmont, a rocky area, and I'm a rock hound. I scan roadsides for rock piles on public right-of-ways. At 55 mph I can judge the heft required to boost a boulder into the truck. If a rock is the right size to lift, I'll go back with my gloves and back brace and haul it to our yard.

For the last two weeks at our house we've been watching the Discovery Channel's powerful and mesmerizing eleven episode series "Planet Earth," or as Betsy calls it, the "Somebody's Mama Steals Somebody Else's Babies so Her Babies Can Eat" series.

The thought of what Spartanburg County will look like decades in the future disturbs my sleep. On my worst nights I see a vision of unregulated surreal sprawl as we cling to outmoded ideas of prosperity and growth.

I've been thinking all week about the greening of our culture that seems to be underway. Out there in America 2006 was "the Green Year." Over the months I collected "Green Issue" covers from TIME, NEWSWEEK, and VANITY FAIR. There were others I'm sure I missed. From January to December "Green" became a national media watchword. Almost every day there was something on TV or in the news about global warming. "A threat graver than terrorism," VANITY FAIR called it. "From politics to lifestyle… Saving the environment is suddenly hot," NEWSWEEK claimed on its cover last July.

We were out walking the dog last week when a neighbor pulled up and asked, "Any cows in your backyard?

"Cows?"

"Two brown cows wandering around."

He explained how the cows had been grazing on the new grass down their way for two or three days and said we should keep an eye out for them in our end of the neighborhood. He'd seen them at least three times. We thanked him, and Betsy asked if he'd come and tell us if he saw them again. She didn't want to miss cows grazing in the suburbs.

When I was a kid growing up on the north side of Spartanburg one of the AM radio stations I listened to claimed to broadcast "from the banks of the mighty Chinquapin." It made Chinquapin Creek, the largest of Lawson's Fork's tributaries, sound like the Mississippi River.

Here at the end of the year I'd like to reflect for a few hundred words about time and then make some judgments about a few Spartanburg developments that have passed over the rim of eternity in the last calendar year. After all, it's late December, the last month of twelve in the great annual cycle.

It's been over a year since I wrote about snakes, but I think it's time. SNAKES ON A PLANE has brought my reptile friends into the spotlight, and once again they're getting a bad rap.

I have enjoyed encounters with snakes for three decades now and still mark my years by the first snake I see in the spring. The year 2006 it was a Northern Brown Snake out in the yard, a slug, earthworm, and insect eater only 10 inches long. It turned up in some wood I was moving. I picked it up, admired it, and then placed it back under the log.