During these colder months, The Mountain’s resident wildlife is quieter — not silent, just less likely to be ranging as it did in the fall and will again in six weeks or so. But I’ve known since I was a kid that a change in conditions can prompt critters to stir, expand their patterns, seek food and water or a new den.
I looks like this week’s heavy snowfall did exactly that.
Though neither of our trailcams has picked up whitetail recently, we know they’re there, probably hanging out on the eastern slopes. During the last 24 hours, however, Mountain One recorded three smaller visitors.
The first, around 6pm last night, was a bobcat. That’s only our second sighting, the other coming in October on Mountain Two during daylight hours.
About an hour later, a lone ‘coon sauntered through the frame.
It was almost 4am when a gray fox crossed the same snowy patch of ground.
We can’t be there right now, of course. But in our absence, these scenes sustain us.
The Mountain is over four hours’ drive from Memphis, Tennessee — not that far in some respects, but in other ways the two are worlds apart. It’s the difference between Country and city, red dirt and urban grime, peace and strife, life and decay.
I bring this up today, obviously, because of video released last night by Memphis PD, in which we see badge-toting agents of the State savagely pummel a 29-year-old man to death. The five perpetrators of the murder wore body cameras that recorded their actions, and they all knew it. They either felt that their actions were justified, or they simply didn’t care.
Predictably, reaction was swift and, in Memphis and a number of other cities across the country, it erupted into large protests. Not all were peaceful. Common among these convulsions was the now-familiar defund-the-police theme, along with tortured attempts to hustle a race angle — despite the fact that the victim and his murderers all were black. So’s the chief of police.
The video speaks for itself.
Don’t expect me to expand on that. Yes, this is serious as hell, and yes, it involves matters of individual Liberty — State actors terminating the life of a citizen, without apparent provocation and certainly in violation of the law.
Once upon a time I would’ve waxed furious about this, both the incident and the reaction, producing a thousand words of pithy commentary, but it’s just not in me anymore. I believe I’ve finally reached the point at which I no longer give a damn.
America’s major urban centers suffer from advanced, terminal cultural rot. All of them. Democrats and other progressives are in charge of most, and even those under nominal Republican control are caught in an appeasement trap — they bow to every identity and dance to the tune called by every outrage.
This is irreversible.
I’ve managed, perhaps in spite of myself, to survive into my 66th year. After brief infatuation with city life in my younger, less principled days, I made my way — worked my way — to what matters. At long last I’ve found the people, the places and the traditions that are most important to me.
None of those live under the soot-stained dome or on the shit-soiled streets of a big city.
So, as far as I’m concerned, let ’em burn.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB