The Rest of North Dakota

    Based on my last post, you would have thought that maybe ND had a bad rap.  Turned out that we had not yet gotten to ground zero for fracking.  It was disturbing that it was happening on farmland.  However, we turned off on a scenic byway.  As we came over a rise and got our first glimpse of the Missouri Breaks (Badlands), we were treated to the most beautiful scene of our trip.  Then there was the total heartbreak of the roads, the trucks, the water suckers and pipes, and the numerous scars for wells, depots, offices, camps for the oil field workers, sleepy little cowboy towns that had been turned into god-awful clusters of temporary buildings.  And everywhere the dust and the noise and the wide loads.  

     Honestly, is nothing sacred?  Will we rape every piece of land and threaten our health, water supplies and wildlife habitats, so that we can continue to enjoy cheap (relatively) energy.  Why do we cling to fossil fuels as if our lives depended on it?  It can only end in environmental and economic disaster for the US.