It's us.

 Mankind.

 I would use Humankind except it would be too kind. What we're doing is not humane.

 I took a long walk yesterday with four of our dogs, Melvin, Tommy, Oliver and Powder. George stayed home. He's old and tired but remembers all our walks together.

 I wanted to know, on a more intimate level, the almost fifty acres of stunningly beautiful country we're adding to CastleRock Texas. This property stretches from Wirtz Dam (which holds back Lake Lyndon Baines Johnson) along the water of Lake Marble Falls for almost half a mile. Boulders the size of school buses busy the shoreline, otherworldly.

 A twenty foot deep creek snakes down from bald granite domes. Oak trees with massive knurled trunks spread out four stories overhead. Whitetail deer are everywhere, wary but not afraid. The springtime wild flowers are bold impressionistic oils on canvas. A true Texan wetlands sport Cat Tails and reeds. The frogs bark at the dogs. The dogs see things through their noses. I am loving this--

 --until I come upon the evidence--the garbage, the trash, the couches, the old bedsprings, the broken television sets, the asphalt shingles, the bald used tires, the PVC piping, the rotting two by fours, broken bottles, fifty five gallon god-knows-what's, the Pampers, the shelving, the books, the rusting work-out machines--the shit.

I look again to the beauty of the place and see that it is struggling to stay beautiful. Double giant power poles march side by side, up and down the terrain, carrying power, Important Power, to all those in need or greed, whatever. A one hundred foot wide scar is kept barren of all but grass and its seed and power.

 The dirt roads are arteries for fat cells called Man. At the end of each one is crammed the crap of humanity. You can see that these people dumped in haste, not wanting to get caught, some remnant of a consciousness long left for dead. There, some dozen giant oaks, cut with a chainsaw, chopped up and murdered so some dirty toothed dingle-berry meth-head can sit on the side of the road in his dirty white and brown Chevy pick-up selling Real Oak Firewood this winter.

 This is war, in a way. The BIG WAR.

 We're going to clean this place up. We're going to restore all that we can. We're going to live with the land, not on it. People who move here are going to see with their noses and smell with their eyes, like my dogs, this incredible and fragile beauty we call home.

 Stonethrower would understand.