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Saturday, September 28, 2013

A Good Hike Totally Spoiled

Up in the foothills
I don't know what was  going on at Centennial High School this morning, but at 7:45 am crap music was blasting out of the stadium PA system.  Even when we were miles away from the school we could hear the racket as if we were at the stadium.  Apparently, no adults were supervising the activities; or, if there were adults present they were as oblivious as the young people.  To make matters worse there was a flyer on our car window when we got back, announcing yet another fight to preserve the area around Tortugas Mountain.
Descending into the lower desert

This butterfly was flopping around on the trail

Into the verdant desert

West of the tortoise

We were at least four times further away from Centennial than this

More bad news for the mountain?

4 comments:

Dr. K said...

Beautiful butterfly photo. Let's hope we can keep development off of the mountain.

Scott said...

I agree, Dr. K: the butterfly image was just fine. I fear that this encroachment on the mountain is going to be a constant, Packrat. What a terrible shame. It brings to mind a phrase coined by famous ecologist Daniel Janzen when he was talking about assaults (like invasive plants) pressing-in on all sides in protected natural areas: "the eternal external threat". Even the audio pollution was an external threat this morning. Will you be attending the meeting? Keep us posted.

packrat said...

Scott:

We knew when they decided to build that high school near the mountain that the consequences could be dire. I haven't decided yet whether to attend the meeting about development; it'll be one more thing, I'm sure, to aggravate me about the lack of critical planning skills. Not only that, our "good" county commissioner, Karen Perez, resigned her position months ago and Governor Martinez appointed a young Republican to the position (the first time a Republican has held the post in decades), and he is decidedly pro-business. I'm not sure how much I can stand to be irritated about this mess.

Scott said...

I hear you, Packrat. I'll bet you're in the unincorporated portion of Dona Ana County, but poor planning could happen just as easily inside the city limits, too, I'd wager. Absolutely astonishingly, our county, a bastion of Republicanism for the last century, now has a Democratic majority in terms of voter registration and we have two Democratic commissioners and one minority (i.e., Republican) commissioner. However, the previous Republican administration was dysfunctional (the newspapers, deservedly, had a field day with those clowns) and really ran the county into the ground financially, so the Democrats are trying to claw their way out of the fiscal hole and (as a result) are acting more fiscally-conservative Republican than might have been anticipated. And, I live in one of the three wealthiest counties in Pennsylvania; we shouldn't be in this mess.

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