I can’t explain how much I love being able to wander freely out here – through meadows and forests. From my atelier’s French doors I look across a huge field leading up the side of a hill to a forest I love to spend time in. All I have to do is get dressed, grab my pack and my valashka, and start walking. At dawn and dusk I watch the large animals – deer and boar – graze freely.
And today that all changed. Coming back from our hill walk we discovered we couldn’t go directly down the hill because some selfish turd had erected an immense electric fence across two hills – with one tiny sign at the very bottom, blocking a dirt access road to the bush which has been in use by foresters and hunters since way before i got here almost 2 decades ago – the sign read “Entry forbidden! Breeding bull.” Since when does a bull need 10 square miles to breed?
I can’t even begin to explain how sick I felt as I saw western selfishness and greed suddenly appear in my village. The fence erector doesn’t even own the land, he rents it from the village agricultural cooperative, which is a collection of many villagers’ land parcels. Both my mother-in-law and my wife’s uncle, to name but two, own parcels of land which are now surrounded by a high voltage electric fence.
I can still get to the forest by going around the fence (but you have no idea how big it is) but it’s the sheer principle of what it represents that gets to me.
“Oh give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don’t fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don’t fence me in”
