By Ralph Barnes
Author’s Note: During the past few months a series of articles appeared in this
spot outlining the history of our beloved homeland. We do indeed have an
eventful past and should honor those who preceded us. Our lives have been
enriched by their travails and we owe them our gratitude. Our forefathers
bequeathed us this land as a sacred trust. With the bequest came the hallowed
duty to safeguard our life-sustaining heritage for those who follow. How future
generations will view the present guardians of the trust is the question that
should haunt all of us. Fittingly, the last of this series is a story of a
fictional place in a future time that broke the trust and in so doing replaced
an earthly Eden with a province from Hell. Any similarities between the place
depicted and any existing place is purely coincidental.
Dateline: 2087 A D- - - - - - - - - somewhere in the forbidden zone- - - - - -
- - - -
Three figures, in contamination suits moved cumbersomely among the ancient
tombstones. The bulky suits were a hindrance to their search but essential for
protection against the lethal toxins that had permeated the ground. Each read
the names aloud so the others could hear; Tipton--Abney--Rogers
--Brandenburg--Chaney--Arvin--Miller--Cox--Blackwell--Marcum--Calmes--Noland—Wise--Isaacs--
Rose--Crowe--Woolery--Hall--Horn--Fowler--Harrison--Dixon--Newton--Smyth--Snowden.
It was like a roll call of their ancestry and the names rolled off their lips
with an ease that familiarity brings;
Brinegar--Hardy--McIntosh--Neal--Powell--Richardson--Puckett--Sparks--Henry--Walters—Riddell--
Williams--Fike--Estes--Flynn--Isaacs--Johnson--McKinney--Rice--Winkler. The
searchers had heard these family names often, when the old times were
discussed. The old times referred to an era long ago when their forefathers
still lived in the ancient homeland known as Paradise Valley. None of the
families had lived in the valley since the "great catastrophe" of
2031.
The three searchers were on a mission of honor to return the ashes of Sarah
Richardson to Paradise Valley. The aged matron had elicited a deathbed promise
from her great-grandson, Logan, to return her remains to the place of her
birth. It was her wish to be interred, as had been the custom in the old days,
but land was much too precious in an over-crowded world to waste space burying
bodies. All of that was beyond the elderly lady’s comprehension. So, to ease
her troubled soul, they simply lied to her and promised to bury her remains,
knowing full well that present laws required the cremation of all cadavers.
Logan felt honor bound to at least return her ashes to the ancestral burying
grounds. To that end, he enlisted the help of two other people with familial
ties to the valley to assist in the project. In spite of the danger, both
volunteers had jumped at the opportunity to visit the fabled land of their
forefathers.
Logan’s pledge to his dying great-grandmother was not an easy promise to keep.
The spot she chose for her final resting place was off limits to ordinary
citizens and authorities did not look kindly on those who entered the dangerous
and forbidding place.
Even before the threesome reached the edge of the forbidden zone the vegetation
had turned the sickly color of greenish yellow that signifies the approach of
death. The group, with some trepidation, ignored the signs warning them to
proceed no further and continued on their mission. The desire to see the place
of their ancestry was stronger than the fear for their health. The interior of
the forbidden zone eerily resembled that hellish place described long ago in
Dante’s Inferno. It was as if the atmosphere of purgatory itself had been
imported here. The anguish of the group was deepened by the sickening knowledge
that this venomous netherworld was once a glorious valley with pristine streams
and marvelous mountains.
The members of the party grew up listening to the stories at family gatherings
about an earthly Eden where generation upon generation of their ancestors had
worked and played. All had viewed the old photographs that depicted a breathtakingly
beautiful river valley, picturesquely framed by luxuriantly forested mountains.
A Shangri-La so beautiful that God must have reserved it for a favored people.
Sarah Richardson had been the last person alive with a living memory of what
was now simply referred to as the "old homeland."
The ancient matriarch spoke frequently about the destruction of her birthplace.
It was a troubling subject for her and she could not let it rest. It was as if
she felt obligated to defend her contemporaries from any blame for the
"great disaster." Logan had heard the tale so many times he knew it
by heart. Each time she began, apologetically, by explaining that there had
always been a high tolerance level for polluters in the area. The history of
the place was marked by pollutants. The iron furnaces, oil fields, railroads,
coal washers, junkyards and loggers had all contributed their share to the
destruction of the area’s natural beauty. Luckily, in each of those cases, the
carnage played out in time to allow nature to begin the slow process of healing
the scarred land. Unfortunately, there was never any chance that nature could
recover after the "great disaster."
The final catastrophe had an inconspicuous beginning during the waning years of
the Twentieth Century. A waste management company came to town and offered big
money to a few landowners for dumpsites and prudently offered compensation to
the local government for allowing them to bury outside waste in the county.
Assurances were given that the dumps were perfectly safe. Even the state officials,
whose job it were to regulate such sites, joined with the officials of the
waste management company to reassure a jittery population that they were
absolutely safe.
In the excitement two important questions were left unasked. If these dumps are
so infallible, how come other communities, including those where the state
officials live, are willing to pay to bring their trash here? Given the volume
of refuse, how can any monitoring system prevent dangerous chemicals from being
hidden in ordinary trash? But who can argue with the experts? In the end the
token resistance was overcome and the rubbish flowed in.
Of course, there always are some people who put immediate profit before the
public welfare, even to the point of jeopardizing the future of their own
descendants. But the vast majority of the people in Paradise Valley would never
knowingly have done anything to destroy the land. It wasn’t that the people
didn’t care about future generations; they simply were too engrossed in
everyday problems to think about the future. Sarah Richardson had been emphatic
on that point.
Nobody much noticed as the mounds of trash grew in number and size until they
dwarfed the original mountains. It was common knowledge that the region lay
atop a fault zone and was a high risk for an earthquake, but there had never
been one, and not much thought was given to the matter. By the year 2031, the huge
artificial mounds containing the refuse from a hundred communities, far removed
from the dumping ground, dominated the landscape.
It was in that year, during the rainy season, that the unthinkable came to
pass. The continental plates immediately beneath the valley shifted, creating
an upheaval in the vicinity of the great mountains of refuse. The fragile
mounds ruptured like overripe melons, unmasking their corrupted interiors. An
overpowering stench immediately began emanating from the newly opened chasms.
The residents wondered then how anything harmless could produce such a foul
odor.
A short time after the tremors ceased, the skies literally opened up and rain
fell in sheets for several days. It was as if an offended nature was trying to
wash away the repulsive refuse. The water poured into the cavities and blended
with the contaminants within to form a lethal muck. The putrid mess erupted
from the fractured mounds like corruption from cankerous sores and oozed down
the slopes contaminating everything in its path. Immediately, the noxious fumes
killed all life near the mounds.
In the weeks that followed, the fetid mixture gradually seeped into the soil
and contaminated the ground water. The valley began to die as if pierced in the
heart by an arrow. The once pristine streams and rivers where generations had
enjoyed the good life were now polluted for eternity. The fatal toxins
gradually spread throughout the entire valley, and beyond. The surviving
inhabitants, whose families had lived in the Paradise Valley for centuries,
were cast out of the land of their ancestors and reduced to a wretched
existence as refugees.
At first, the former residents held some hope that a forgiving nature once
again would redeem them from their folly. But alas, that was not to be, and the
horrifying truth soon became apparent. Their special Eden would forever be, a
paradise lost.