Notes from my Knapsack 2-3-22

Notes from my Knapsack 2-3-22
Jeff Gill

Development's subversive edges
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Since I have professional reasons that get me out and around the county on a regular basis, it wasn't hard to find an opportunity not long after the big announcement to drive out Rt. 62, and out into northern Jersey Township along Green Chapel Road, Clover Valley Road, Mink Street.

Right now, it looks like most of rural Licking County. Turns out that's a big part of the attraction: the development's hub in this case wanted to be far away from major highways or railroads, but with access. That's us in a nutshell outside of our larger communities.

Our once and former Air Force Base, now an economic engine in its own right, came here because of deep sediments and low levels of unavoidable vibration, establishing a metrology lab for guidance system calibration. Those first guidance systems helped to spur the development of semiconductors, in a roundabout way, and now as the news decries the fact that 80% of the computer chips our US economy depends on are made overseas, we're going to become part of solving that problem, right here.

We're losing good farmland, there's no doubt about it. At some point, we have to come to terms with when and how we treat topsoil and fertile land with the respect it deserves, but as with fossil fuels, the reckoning seems far enough away to put off a bit longer. Each new housing development starts with scraping away all the organic soil down to more solid, stable, mineralized clays and silts; some of the smarter developers sell that stuff, others just find a place to dump it, then buy new topsoil a year or two later to put down in a thin layer around the new build on the stable footers dug down below the frost line.

Yet driving down Miller Road, whose meandering path bisects the parcel in question, and turning back towards 161 on Mink, I could see through the wintry spindles of barren trees tall grey and white and black warehouses marching north, as they've been doing for some time. In a sense, these fields have been doomed for quite a while. The question is whether we want more distribution centers and fulfillment facilities or an actual factory building out on this land.

Or we could shout "stop," and hurl our smart phones to the ground, after first deleting our credit card numbers from all the ordering and delivering and transportation apps, retreating to our homes where we retool our lives to grow our food and card wool together as a neighborhood and brew beverages for our community at the alehouse where we also eat communally.

I'm not meaning to make fun of any of that, truly. In fact, I think if we're going to have healthy communities and families, with or without billions of investment and tens of thousands of jobs, we need to find and maintain some kind of balance between our virtual lives and our natural interactions. Eating fast food isn't the problem as much as always consuming it is, and while we can't all grow all of our own food, it would be both psychologically and ecologically healthier if more of us grew some, got our fingernails dirtier, and got in touch mentally and physically with soil and fruitfulness.

Lots of people have quoted Joni recently: "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." Perhaps as we're losing some land to development, we can use this opportunity to gain some new appreciation for the land that gives us life.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he grows a mean pot of basil for his pesto, but hasn't raised his own garlic, yet. Tell him how you breathe deeply outdoors at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.