Perspective

• Our area wasn't ravaged by tornadoes, leaving dozens dead and hundreds injured.
• I don't have a fatal disease.
• I didn't lose my job, wreck my car, or get stomped on by a cornered moose.
• They did cut down a couple dozen trees across the river from us.

There, that's not so bad.

I took a walk across the river this afternoon, and apart from the 50-foot Steam Boundary Zone (SMZ), it's pretty much a clear-cut. Accomplished in one day.

I felt numb walking around, but the size and quality of the road the bulldozer created struck me most.

Nature lovers in their cars, as well as drunken idiots on ATV's, can now easily drive to where the river rounds the corner. We'll be able to see and hear them juuuuust fine.

Once a year I have a nightmare in which the land across the river is suddenly and completely transformed into a casino or motel. This is definitely not that, but it is real, it's ugly, and a nice area of forest is denuded. Yeah, stuff will grow back, but it woulda killed 'em to leave a few trees standing?