It's even worse now as you all know.
There are some completely finished developments
down in the valley West of me, 35 miles away down
on the flats that used to be agricultural land.
Home developments of two-storey, finished
houses that are all vacant.
They're all vacant.
The recession hit just as they were going
to put those on the market.
And none of them has been occupied.
In fact, they even had a sign at one place I drove
by that said, house to live in.
Free.
This poem I'm going to read right now
is, I'm going to dedicate it to Gary INAUDIBLE It's
called "Siberian Outpost."
I borrowed one of the lines from him,
but I'm going to have to ask you where he got the line from when
I get a chance.
"Siberian Outpost" does not refer to a place of Siberia.
It is a remote trail intersection
at the southern end of the High Sierra.
One of the trails is the Pacific Crest Trail.
And the other trail is the Siberian Meadow trail,
which is an old trail for bringing herds of chicken
in earlier times to turn loose by the thousands
to graze probably back in the 1890s
and in the 1910s, before it became a National Park anyway.
"Siberian Outpost"
"What are these deserts?
Sheep overgrazed them years ago?
A sweeping, gallery forest and a gentle 5-mile ridge of foxtail
pine.
Tom, my artist conspirator.
Tom and I walked up the arid slope
caught in lightning crashes.
Siberian outpost meadow, munched grass tufts and gopher holes
shelter in the space beneath a huge old edge
zone foxtail pine.
Hailstorm in heavy showers, big ripped trees ,
red bark chunks stay barely dry.
Lifetimes ago.
Lifetimes ago, this same tree sheltered me
on thornapple pine.
I was a junior bodhisattva that they named "No More Tricks."
[LAUGHTER]
And was set to sit with the boulders here,
an aeon or two Till the soil came right up to my eyes,
I shook and yank and stood and said,
OK, Tom, let's head back to camp.
The desert smells like rain."
[LAUGHTER]