Regarding Allen Best’s provocative story on
exurbia, I think he paints with too broad a brush (HCN, 6/13/05:
How dense can we be?).
There are those of us living in
paradise who try to do so with environmental consciousness, and who
are not a drain on our county treasuries. My husband and I live on
40 acres of western New Mexico bordering the Cibola National
Forest, in a passive solar adobe home we built ourselves. We store
up to 6,000 gallons of rainwater.
Our community built and
maintains 25 miles of gravel and dirt roads. Many of us are
retired, and rarely drive to the city. On our land, we thin and
trim trees by the hundreds to make our place more fire-resistant.
We feed and provide water to birds to help them survive drought.
We’ve learned wildland firefighting techniques and volunteer
with a local brigade.
We create small check dams to help
control erosion. We plant native flowers, shrubs and trees to
improve habitat. We think we live much more lightly upon the land
than the sheep, cattle and loggers who came before us. And we teach
our grandchildren, when they visit, to respect and care for this
fragile environment.
Caroly Jones and George
Steigerwald
Ramah, New Mexico
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Living lightly in exurbia.
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