Word: barrens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...nation's current domestic oil production and 23% of its gas. The next place they hope to develop as a major energy source is a tough one: the floor of the ice-jammed Beaufort Sea, about 275 miles above the Arctic Circle, off Alaska's nearly barren north coast...
...everywhere. Torn iron shutters lie twisted on sidewalks amidst festering heaps of garbage. In once elegant residential neighborhoods, most of the villas are now hollow hulks, festooned with uprooted eucalyptus trees and scarred by bullets or grenades. Where the Roman Catholic cathedral once stood is a barren empty lot; it is hard to imagine a building ever having been there. The National Library was partially ransacked, its floor is strewn with books...
...that scene, the mother and son circle the stage, his blind tom-cat to her broken-winged sparrow, until Tom lowers his tail, breaks the silence in order to regain the peace of their barren thicket. A breakable pane hangs between them always, a horse-drawn past and jet-lured future caught in the same jam of traffic but still enveloped in the mist and mystery of dreams...
Unfortunately, Utah and Nevada generally defeat such attempts. As I left town, the land changed from low foothill country of Colorado. Watered hillocks gave way to the terrifying, barren and twisted land that sees less than seven inches of rain a year. The road, no longer flanked by fences and farms, cannot remain a symbol of man's secure hold on his own turf. It seems instead an imposition, almost an irrelevance. As I passed the turnoff to Salt Lake other motorists evaporated. I was left all alone on a superhighway, seeing five cars in half an hour...
There are other dumps. Only a few miles away, near a barren field called the Love Canal, 240 families had to be evacuated last year when state officials found enough dioxin buried beneath their homes to kill half the earth's population. Several other industrial dumpsites in New York may also be feeding the chemical into nearby rivers; and from Maine to Arkansas to California and Oregon, dioxin has left a trail of sickness, fetal miscarriages and death wherever it has entered the environment...