Turquoise Trail.

INCREMENTAL HURTS TO LANDSCAPE

What matters most to me are the little incremental hurts to scenic character along the Turquoise Trail. Things like sculpture right against the road to remind viewers how clever humans are, and why nature can't catch a break away from them.  Why do we need human artifacts when the natural landscape does something wonderous in terms of complexity--who could ever fathom the complex undulation of planes along the route from here to the city? Where else could we get a sense of infinite space without losing access to the infinitely small? Isn't human sculpture just a stale and limited thing by comparison? Isn't building on such land, because it's your legal right, not just a violation of nature's aesthetics--what Walt Whitman terms its "great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality"--and replacing it with a false aesthetics around the human sense of entitlement?


NOTES: TO A PRESIDENT

ALL you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,
You have not learn'd of Nature--of the politics of Nature, you have
not learn'd the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality;
You have not seen that only such as they are for These States,
And that what is less than they, must sooner or later lift off from
These States. 

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1860, p 229. 

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AESTHTICS

Consider that aesthetics are about relationships. There might not be a distinction, as in saying it is different from that

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PAVING

We always get more paving but never less. When politicians win elections, they pave the roads where their voters live as tribute for their votes. 

I administer a few Facebook groups. The groups mainly concern three geographic areas, varied ethnically and culturally. All are somewhat in the low income category, but the one outside the US can't be compared economically with those in the US; the national economies are so different. I would categorize the US examples as bordering on the Third World, and the non US one as genuinely Third World (with the widespread delusion that it is not). But that's another issue. All these places are addicted to paving. 

July, 2019: We noticed only today what all the fuss was about.that held up traffic on the Turquoise Trail last Wednesday. They were paving the shoulders for a mile or two north of Lone Butte. As usual,  I missed any notification about this important project. While the existing roadbed was already remarkably wide, the bike lane was narrow. But now the bike lane has been widened to more than twice what it had been.

Lone Butte is around a third of the way along the scenic byway. That would make the roadbed so wide that I could picture there being two lanes in either direction. But that is only a fantasy, right? And were I a biker, I'd still be nervous with the wider lane. Will groups ride side by side so they can converse? What I would like best would be to turn the old bike lane into a gravelled lane that would tend to emphasize the distinction between car lane and bike lane. That would have been good for rain water percolation into the ground too. 

But like I say, governments don't remove paving; they only add it.

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