In spite of the fact that attempting to walk with Jesus lands you smack in the middle of Mystery, I feel that Christians really have no business being superstitious. Still, as I have hinted, sometimes I am. For example, they say the first robin is a sign of spring. Nothing really superstitious about that. But how do you interpret this? The other day I was taking my five-mile walk and I saw my first robin of the season (a little late if you ask me). It was dead. On the side of the road. I almost stepped on it. I mean, really.
In other rants:
I would never claim that I am not a capitalist. Even if I don't like the idea of capitalism very much, I can recognise that I still live like one. Therefore, I am probably a capitalist. It's also somewhat telling that I always get this nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach when people start talking about how communal the first century church was. I like having stuff to call "mine," even if I'm deceiving myself about it.
Still, I find things like this a little ridiculous.
What on earth is the point of having a beautiful piece of woods and pond if you're going to uglify the entire thing by slapping bright yellow stickers all over it? In the UK, people allow walking and hiking paths, complete with discrete signposts and picturesque stiles over fences, so that the public can traipse across their private property. I'm sure every so often this right gets abused, but for the most part it seems to me that people are grateful for the opportunity to stroll in beautiful places and would never dream of defacing them.
I guess the owners of this particular property wanted to be able to deface theirs in their own way. In case you think this is an isolated corner of their forest, let me give you a fuller picture.
Okay, kids, how many yellow post-it notes can you find?
14 comments:
You might be interested to know that as a property owner that if you don't post it and have things like berries growing people will steal them from you. Or you will have people squat and then claim it as thier's.
I hadn't thought about berries. ;) I guess it would depend on how invested I was in eating them; otherwise I don't think I'd mind if other people enjoyed them. The squatter issue would be more problematic. Still, I say it seems to work in the UK. Also, I can grant a few "no trespassing" signs in strategic points, but is it really necessary to put two each on every third tree?
I think much of Europe has the same policy of allowing people to wander on private property. How well I remember wandering through that cowpasture in Scotland! :-)How they control "squatters' rights" I don't know, but in Sweden, it would be scandalous to own beachfront property and not expect the public to enjoy it too!
that is one of the down sides of living in NJ. Not enough land to put up no tress passing signs.
My grandparents used to find hippies wandering their farm looking for naturally occurring marijuana, but they never seemed to punish us for it. (Tee hee.)
I'm with Jennnnnn. And Boazzzzzz. And the disciplesssss.
Maybe they can post things without the starch yellow notes that draw away from the beauty. It is a shame.
We spend yesterday out by a lake (okay, a man-made reservoir, but still) - gorgeous. I love nature. I'm ready for camping season to begin!
don't forget hunters. i remember one time a friend of mine *squatted* (in a different sense of the word) in the woods. only later we found out that he was scaring off the nearby deer in the land we were trespassing. he was also alerting them to the presence of the hunters just above him. i imagine they wanted to bring him home as a trophy...
if he wouldn't be so hard to clean.
yuk. yuk.
See, MOM knows what I'm talkin' about! I guess you have to see it to believe it . . . (Yes, Mom, I too had flashbacks to the near-cow experience.)
John--nice. But I guess if I didn't want the totally depraved crawling all over my land, *I* couldn't go for walks on it either . . . That quote is hilarious, by the way.
Cube Rev--bummer.
Zimmmmm--glad somebody gets it. Or something. ;)
Heather--yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
Jasdye--actually, I DIDN'T forget about hunters. That was the one reason I could think of that would make me want to keep people off my land. If I had any, I mean.
I guess part of what contributed to this line of thought (besides walking past the glaring yellow signs) was remembering being a kid and roaming free in everybody else's woods around my house and what a great experience and opportunity that was.
I thought the proliferation of yellow signs was for the deer. Most people don't know that they can actually read. The trouble is that their memory is so bad, that they need to have things repeated quite alot before they can commit it to memory.
Some world we live in, eh? It just makes me long for heaven that much more.
If you're expecting people to come walking by and read those signs, then your property can't be all that private.
Ugh! Here in the 'burbs it's hard enough to escape all the noise and traffic without having to run into nasty reminders like yellow signs. And yet they're always there. If not yellow signs, then other obnoxious signs of humans abound (like beer cans and other debris).
Another reason that trespassing signs are posted is because if someone gets injured on your land they can sue you.
Another reason to roll one's eyes at American culture.
Sing it everyone, "and the sign says, you have to have a membership card to get inside. Huh!"
No, that's not one of the songs I'm "digging". But it goes through my head when I read this conversation.
Craver--they can? And . . . yes, it does.
AMM--indeed. The beer cans (and pieces of plastic lawn furniture which I have seen inexplicably in the middle of nowhere) are something else one might rant about, I suppose.
Dave--if my eyes rolled any more, I'd probably fall over from dizziness.
I think the whole dead robin thing would bother me too. Don't go to Craver's! He's got a dead sparrow (or some such thing) on the front page!
LL--too late! I saw that. I find this all just a little too ominous, in spite of Craver's edifying reflections.
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