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Health & Fitness

Clash of Cultures, Reprised

They were starting to cut some roads into the woods above the Almaden vineyards. The patches of naked earth were reddish orange/brown in color, which glistened in the bright, clear sunlight for the moisture of the newly turned earth. It could almost be seen as torn flesh where its protective skin was the low canopy of the dense oak forest, this, when viewed from a fair distance.

It was bad enough when they turned over scores upon scores of acres of flat, bottom land where we grew our crops of vegetables.  However, to watch the old, quiet forest be transformed into a suburb in a few dozen hours, this was really depressing. I used to take my dog for walks above the new road beds, like in some way, to pay my respects to these woods that would soon be dozed over and burned. These were always sombre walks, quiet and restive. But there was one afternoon, as the sun was setting behind our backs, that was just real damn depressing. We were approaching the crown of a low, easy hill when we found ourselves at the top of shallow but rocky bluff. We looked down the rocky face below, where the saplings were starting to push through the fallen rock, long ago sheared from this small cliff.

Through the deepening shadows down below, I saw something I hadn’t expected. There was the carcass of a calf rotting on the rock shards beneath us. At first, I thought perhaps it had fallen down from up near our position, but, that wasn’t real likely, even a calf wouldn’t be that stupid or clumsy. We back tracked a little and circled round this little scar in the hill. It didn’t take long to find the dead cow. It was white with big brown patches on its hide, the hide and bones being about all that was left. The birds and the foxes and the insects had pretty much cleaned all the meat out, but the hide was still kind of flexible so the death probably took place several months before, not twenty years ago. But, more than a death, this was a crime scene.

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The calf scull had a very large hole on one side and in the hole was a large, broken rock with several sharp edges. In my mind’s eye, I immediately concluded that some tract kids had pointlessly killed this calf just to see if they could do it. When the tract kids from the new surrounding neighborhoods went out on to bare fields or into the woods, they always would travel as a gang. You almost never saw one of these new people out in nature solo, but nearly always in loud, rousty gangs. . . .

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