My Wild Place, Now A Meth Lab

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Bubbanumber1

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Nov 28, 2005
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I grew up in the kind of wild place that books are written about. Growing up wild and free was not unknown back in the 60s and 70s as the lower 48 still had many a mysterious place with deep dark forests and snake infested fish filled swamps. Beyond the treeline on the other side of our garden lay a forest that I was never as a kid able to walk through to the other side. I never found a road beyond the mountain and I never saw another human there until I went back years later and discovered they had built a road around the private land and bought out a timber company in order to develop the area. I have known about the road for ten years now.

As a kid we had a unlimited amount of wildlife. Turkeys, the odd bear, big bucks and plenty of doe, one of the last confirmed cougars that was ever seen in the region, and if you told somebody a bigfoot lived back there they would believe it as it was truly wild back then. In the 70s it was normal for game and fish to show up and ask about the Eagles in the area. They would even have one of the guys go survey them for a week at a time parking his truck at our place. We considered ourselves care takers and would watch them for hours when they nested with binoculars from a mile or so away sitting at the kitchen table. I guess every dream I have ever lived out was started with Sunday pancakes, a kids ration of coffee, and binoculars watching eagles, bluebirds, and the side of a mountain I thought would be forever wild. At night I would sit by the lamp reading and reading again our collection of Blade magazines before lights out, then I would lay awake listening to the whippoorwills till I passed out from a day alone in the woods with my dog.

Today I'm about as sick as I can be as my wild place is no longer wild, its now a series of roads leading to a kingdom of mobile homes and meth heads. I just spent the last couple hours using Google maps to find the old family home and was shocked by the complete destruction of the area that I was once convinced was the wildest place on earth. I guess I'm damm lucky to have been able to play there as a kid but now I feel completely empty outside of my memories, I guess that's the story of many a old man but I don't even feel old yet, maybe Thomas Wolf was right, Now I know I can never go home again as home is no longer there.
 
Man, I'm really sorry to hear that. It's a shame, that almost every 'wild' and beautiful spot has been wiped out in the last couple of decades.
But unlike many today, you have the childhood memories that you can cherish and hold dear. :thumbup: I hope you still have the knives, that are inevitably tied to the place.

Peter
 
That is truely terrible. I have come across a few hidden labs and pot patches before. I just hate that what was once a wooded area with intrinsic value has now become a dangerous place for anyone to be.

Just one more reason I am always armed in the woods.
 
2 have blown up on my road. One neighbor and 2 former neighbors, brothers have all gone to prison for it.

But I still have lots of woods to roam in at my house. I own 85 acres. There are 3 landholders that adjoin my property in the part behind my house. One is 66 acres, one is 90 acres and the other is a little over 100.

However where I hiked as a kid one of my favorite places The Devils Tea Table has houses all the way up to it now. Our other old hangout Elephant Rock is still woodsy but the houses are about halfway up the hill.

Over the ridge from the back of my land and then down the hollows that adjoin the ridge to the next road a guy bought this nice farm and then turned it into a trailer subdivision. It sucks.
 
Missouri is the Meth lab capital. I have found the rubbish from meth labs three times in the woods.

Found this while mushroom hunting this year.
saltriver044.jpg
 
the last time i found a meth lab in the woods.....well two dudes went to jail, alot of meth cooking stuff got destroyed, and some agents said thanks.:o
 
When I was a small child, before we moved to Oceanside, we lived in San Marcos. Now, this is when I was 3-5, and set my tone forever. We had a house with a seperat shared ranch land allotment, but the other side of our back yard was.....nothing. Wild Southern coast interior. I spent a lot of time roaming that. Went back when I was in high school and it was all ticky tack. I'm still sad about that.

I've seen one nice busted burned methlab up in the Sierra near the feather falls area. People up there live out in the country, all nice and peaceful, and have more concern about armed robbery or housebreakers than we do down here in town. It's sad.

I have a solution to meth labs, but I don't think the agents would be (publicly) thanking me afterwards. I can handle a private pot garden, but the meth crap pisses me off. I've got kids, and I'd really like to see meth stamped out. Hard.
 
Yeah, State Wildlife Management Area I roamed when I was a kid was maintained by hunters liscense fees.

Ready for this?

The State sold out part to the county to put in a bike path. No kidding. They have a BIKE PATH running through the middle of a State Game Lands.

Then, 5 years ago they put a big gate on each end of the access road. It is only open for certain game seasons. If you want to scout out a spot pre-season or just enjoy the area, you can't drive in there.

I would imagine the next move will be to shut it down because it is too close to an area used by children....a bike path to be specific.

Then emminent domain will allow the sale for development and they can roll in the trailers or McMansions or whatever brings highest $.

Wild places are getting few and far between indeed.
 
PrimitiveMan said:
Yeah, State Wildlife Management Area I roamed when I was a kid was maintained by hunters liscense fees.

Ready for this?

The State sold out part to the county to put in a bike path. No kidding. They have a BIKE PATH running through the middle of a State Game Lands.

Then, 5 years ago they put a big gate on each end of the access road. It is only open for certain game seasons. If you want to scout out a spot pre-season or just enjoy the area, you can't drive in there.

I would imagine the next move will be to shut it down because it is too close to an area used by children....a bike path to be specific.

Then emminent domain will allow the sale for development and they can roll in the trailers or McMansions or whatever brings highest $.

Wild places are getting few and far between indeed.
Click to expand...

One of my favorite areas Roaring Plains is sort of like that. No bike path but there is the 3 mile FR70 that takes you to the heart of the plains. They open it at the start of hunting season and then gate it off when hunting season is over.

I don't hunt there but I have gone backpacking there during hunting season.(not deer gun) it's no big problem. One night we had this bear dog barking at our tent all night though. It was sort of funny.

There is also a swamp near my house. When the state got the property there was sort of a dispute between the bird watchers and the hunters. Both lobbied pretty hard for the state to get the land, so the way they split the difference is you can hunt there till noon then it's open to people who want to bird watch:thumbup:

We successfuly fought the state against an airport that would have taken our land. If it would have been some sort of park or wildlife refuge then I would have been happy, but like we need another airport:thumbdn::rolleyes:

Trying to figure out some way to will my land to a church group, or a nature club or a school for nature study with the stipulation that it will never be developed:thumbup::cool:
 
Equally disturbing is the loss of private farmland.
Illinois lost 67,900 acres of prime farmland to development from 1987-1992, the fifth highest rate in the country, according to the American Farmland Trust. The loss accelerated to 160,900 acres from 1992-1997, a 137 percent increase. Much of the farmland loss is to lakefront development, housing, and new subdivisions.
Click to expand...

Some of the most productive farmland in the world, gone. So how to make up the difference? More agricultural pressure on marginal farmland (more irrigation, more chemicals, higher costs), and increased dependence on imported food.

Only 20% of Americans are now considered to live in "rural" areas.

Hope not to get political, but here is a bit of irony. Military servicemen and women risk their lives overseas every day to expand and protect the "American way of life." But here at home many of the last few people actually living traditional American lives are in danger of being forced off their land by the military:
http://www.pinoncanyon.com/

Here were two recent successes in New Mexico, keeping gas companies from developing our most pristine outdoor areas.
It took a federal law to keep El Paso gas from bulldozing the Valle Vidal:
http://www.vallevidal.org/

Local governments and activists were successful in keeping a Texas gas company from bulldozing our local wildlife area, the only undeveloped public land within an hour's drive, and our water supply:
http://www.saveoursugarite.org/

My point, we've got to take these victories when we can, treasure the remaining natural areas, and vote for politicians who share our love of wilderness and the outdoors.

But the wins are often less than the losses, especially for private landowners who don't own the mineral rights.
 
Stupid meth labs! Thanks to them, I have to go to a pharmacy every 12 days to get my Zyrtec D and have to do all the signature and drivers license crap.

On the topic of lost wildernesses, I feel your pain. I lived in AL for several years as a young 'un, and we had this GIANT natural red dirt pit behind our house. I mean, a football field could easily fit in there, and the walls were around 30' tall. Getting in and out was always fun, and we were always completely covered in red mud. There was a small rainwater drainage area on one side that we used to get out, but we always slid down the steep sides to get it. I'm sure my mom appreciated that on laundry day. :)

The pit was our own little world. My brother and I and a few friends were the only ones who knew about the pit, so we had all kinds of forts built around the area. This was back in the days when parents would just tell their kids to get of the house and don't come back until the sun goes down (I am only 28, sad how times have changed since then).

Anyway, last time I went back, they had leveled off the whole area back there and put in another subdivision where there used to just be a big forest. Made me sad.
 
When my mother met my father, there was a 2 lane road, that led to the road in which I live on. There was woods on each side of the road, almost all the way to the road. Today, there is no woods, about 7-8 car lots, and every fast-food place you can think of.

Down the road from my house, there used to be all woods, and today there is subdivisions. There is still woods behind my house for about a mile, and across the street for about a half a mile. The only thing stopping sub-divisions is that we are not willing to sell our home to the lawyer that owns the property to develop the land into another 3(or more) subdivisions.

It really does suck.
 
Same problem from this quarter. When I was homeless I had to resort to carrying everything on my back in order to prevent its being stolen by meth heads. Plus had to protect myself against assault more times than since combat service in the USMC.

I am so glad that I never felt that I needed to try any of that crud. It is amazing what it does to the people who wind up giving up their humanity once they use it.

I'm with Koyote on this one. It needs stomped out with avengeance.
 
I'm sorry too Bubba. The WMA across the street from my house was a great place to hike and bike for years. In the last 3-4 it has become the go to place for the hooker who services truckers at the stop about 6 miles west on the interstate and the area is littered with piles of used condoms and douches. There are also miles of wire insulation strewn about from copper thieves using it as a place to strip the wire before selling. I don't mind a private pot patch either but even these leave piles of fertilizer bags and assorted trash. When we were pregnant with our daughter, my wife and I walked 5-10 miles there daily. My daughter is five now and while I still go there at times for a hike alone I do not feel safe taking her there.

As if all the lowlife is not enough, I have twice been stopped by FWC and had my car searched without PC or consent and this in spite of the fact that I have personally turned in poachers there twice.

I too remember running wild all day in the woods and I feel lucky to have had a childhood where that was possible. Now, we have idiots like Hilton cutting people's heads off in the national forrest.
 
All that is lef of my childhood wild place is the railroad right of way and that was bought by some rich guy to use as his private railroad play-toy. There is now a public high school on my former goose blind and the rest is all houses.

That's OK, my new wild place is 140 square kilometers of prime Brazilian real estate. Mac
 
storl said:
Stupid meth labs! Thanks to them, I have to go to a pharmacy every 12 days to get my Zyrtec D and have to do all the signature and drivers license crap.
Click to expand...

You can thank the War On Drugs for this one.

Altering one's state is a part of the human condition, not deviant behavior. Using government to fight this demand is futile. You can try stamping out with all the vengeance possible. It's already being done. Getting tougher on drugs only raises the stakes for criminal element, drains more public resources, and leads to losing ever more freedoms. The result? Drugs are just as easy to find as they've ever been. The really stupid thing is that the country has been through this before, and simply refuses to take the lessons to heart.

The loss of private farmland is a non issue. What folks do with their land is their business. Furthermore, there's little indication that it has affected the ability to produce food. But that's the neat thing about private property. When farming becomes more profitable, you can bet more private land will become available to farming.

There are some instances where I can see some of the places I grew up being lost to development. However, those places were not mine to begin with. Wild places haven't disappeared. Simply shifted. Similarly, I've shifted away from them. It gets difficult to complain too vigorously when we benefit from the growth and economic expansion it brings.
 
I don't see how those meth makers make a profit by buying Sudafeds at Rite Aid :confused:
I think it takes 100,000 pills to make a small batch

I grew up in Concord,CA
Most of my play areas were walnut orchards
Each tree had a pseudo foxhole around it
It was great playing army man in those foxholes
All the walnut orchards became townhouses in the 80's

A lot of it hinges on whether the city council is pro growth or not
Here in Santa Barbara there is a decades long battle between the ranchers/North County (pro growth) and the tree lovers/South County (anti-growth)
There has even been talk of splitting the county in 2 because of the divisions

I think if a guy inherits a 10,000 acre ranch from his great great grandfather
He should be able to do whatever he wants with it
Most of the time there is some group who will buy the land for conservancy
Michael Douglas donated like a million bucks for the cause on a peice of coastal land
It's now called The Douglas Preserve
I think the land owners are happy because they pretty much set the price to sell to the tree lovers
 
Trent, half the time they dont buy the Sudafed, they steal it. That's the reason you have to jump through the hoops to get it. They keep a record of your purchases and monitor whether or not you could legitimately use the amount you have purchased before your next purchase.

My grandparents live in Bend Oregon in the same house that my dad was brought home from the hospital as a baby. They used to be the highest house on the hill and the hill behind it was all sage and juniper desert/forest. My dad had all kinds of adventures there as a kid and every summer growing up I would spend a couple weeks there having adventures of my own. I would find all kinds of Native American artifacts, it was really cool. When I was 13 developers bought the hill and turned it into a housing development full of half million dollar homes. Its terrible. Worst of all the deer still come into the neighborhood which puts them at a huge risk of becoming roadkill...
 
Bubbanumber1 said:
Today I'm about as sick as I can be as my wild place is no longer wild
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Such is the fate of all "wild places", unfortunately.

Just look at how quickly we, as a nation, are ready to drill for oil in wildlife refuges and other protected areas as soon as the price of gas goes up. How often in the entire history of our species has any culture successfully lived in balance with their environment and natural resources? I'm not even sure such a thing is possible. For certain, it will not happen while our population continues to explode and our science allows us to access and plunder every resource available to fuel and maintain our nearly exponential growth. For better or worse, Man has overcome his own limitations (at least until the next plague or global catastrophe).

It's depressing sometimes to go back and visit the places we used to live and play just 10, 5, even 2 years ago to see them paved over, built upon, or cut down.
 
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