April 25th, 2008 Arbor Day

"Acts of creation are normally reserved for Gods and Poets.
To plant a pine, one need only a shovel."
Aldo Leopold

Prodigal Summer

"I don't really see you anywhere but in the woods," he said.
"Well, I guess it's been a while"
"Don't you miss it, any of it?"
"There's some people I'd love to spend the day with, sure, and some things."
"Like what?"
She thought about it--"I couldn't even say. Not cars or electric lights, not movies. Books I can get if I ask, but walking around in a library, putting my hands on books I never knew existed-- that I might miss."

from "How to Read a North Carolina Beach", by Pilkey, Rice and Neal

What's up? Well, the number of buildings is increasing along our Norht Carolina shorelines because we are in teh middle of a giant rush to the sea. The scramble to the beach is fuelded by a society with a lot of money, a love for the sea and desire to live beside it, a greedy development industry, an irresponsible real estate industry, local governments anxious to create more tax revenue and employ more local citizens, and a contempt for the forces of nature.

From a short-term economic standpoint, owning a beachfront house makes sense. Individuals and companies own many such buildings for the sole purpose of making money--an old and respectable American tradition. In this sense, the North Carolina beachfront is a giant cash cow. no doubt about it, however, by ost other measures of societal and personal responsibility, owning a beachfront house is imprudent, if not irrational. Stan Riggs, a geologist at East Carolina University, has suggested that owning beachfront property is akin to having a picnic on an interstate highway, and image meant to convey how irrational it is to put your property as well as yourself and others at risk.