When the Cities are Gone

It could be the wildfires and it could be too much time thinking about Rocky Flats, but George Washington Hayduke’s been on my mind today. (From The Monkey Wrench Gang.)

When the cities are gone, he thought, and all the ruckus has died away, when sunflowers push up through the concrete and asphalt of the forgotten interstate freeways, when the Kremlin and the Pentagon are turned into nursing homes for generals, presidents and other such shitheads, when the glass-aluminum skyscraper tombs of Phoenix Arizona barely show above the sand dunes, why then, why then, why then by God maybe free men and wild women on horses, free women and wild men, can roam the sagebrush canyonlands in freedom — goddammit!  – herding the feral cattle in box canyons, and gorge on bloody meat and bleeding fucking internal organs, and dance all night to the music of fiddles!  banjos!  steel guitars!  by the light of the reborn moon! — by God, yes!  Until, he reflected soberly, and bitterly, and sadly, until the next age of ice and iron comes down, and the engineers and the farmers and the general motherfuckers come back again.