Open space will protect valley from urban madness

Comparisons are useful.

That initial encounter with the Warm Springs bear last summer was unnerving--a portly 300 pounds to my untutored eyes, lying on her belly while scarfing down bird food, then ambling onto the back deck and sniffing the grille within a foot of the back door before crawling across the fence and vanishing into the twilight.

But suddenly being confronted by the Trail Creek moose a few weeks ago was far more chilling: Tales of moose attacks had prepared me for the worst, as my two Labs barked and barked and edged closer to this giant cow standing in Trail Creek just past Boundary Park.

Visions of stomped dogs haunted me. But she turned and vanished back up the creek while my mutts retreated.

If these episodes seem to be unsettling risks of living in a small town in the mountains so close to untamed wildlife that can do real damage, they become trivial when considering the alternative--the risks of living in an urban area.

Modern American metropolises may lack wildlife, but there’s no lack of wild life.

As I scan on-line Internet editions of several major newspapers every morning, it’s appalling to read of life-threatening perils that are a way of life.

The other day, I read of a big-city grandmother cooking dinner who was shot and killed by a sniper, a killer who later admitted he shot the wrong person during a gang initiation.

Another large city reports gasoline fuel additives found in drinking water. Another community may lose federal highway funds because of its inability to control air pollution, which health experts say will cause 1,000 respiratory fatalities this year.

Another big city has been dubbed No. 1 in run-red intersection auto fatalities.

Road-rage accidents and shootings have become ho-hum routine in most cities with urban freeway systems, where congestion and reckless driving habits can fill anyone with rage.

Among my unscientific theories for this metro madness is that too many people have been crowded together in surroundings made uncivilized by endless canyons of concrete and asphalt, the basic tools of the growth-at-any-cost industry.

A friend with deep Southern California roots who now lives in Sun Valley just visited her old digs and all their cosmopolitan amenities. But would she return there to live permanently? Not on her life, she says, after returning to a simpler lifestyle in Sun Valley.

And when one ponders what we have here that stressed urbanites don’t have, it boils down to this--generous surroundings of open space whose natural grandeur we can view for its serenity and tranquility, or use for leisurely excursions, and in which wildlife can live harmoniously.

No other argument seems as compelling when considering the May 25 vote to buy and preserve open space in Blaine County.

The more open space, the less crowding, and the less likely the Wood River Valley ever will be afflicted by the madness that makes most of urban America an adventure in high blood pressure.