Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 5, 1994 TAG: 9411160065
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LIZA FIELD
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
One can understand the governor's bafflement. ``Those people'' opposing the park were not an industry or political party. They had no financial agenda; how, then could they exist?
And as, indeed, they seemed to exist (Disney had apparently heard some voice the governor had not); and as they might oppose a Disney elsewhere in the state - well, who were they? What did they want?
I asked myself these questions along with the governor. After all, I realized, I was one of ``those people,'' whoever we are, who really don't desire more random and sprawling development - theme park and otherwise - across Virginia.
Are we environmentalists? Preservationists? I doubt that anyone opposing the Disney project has announced herself to the neighbors as a convert to Preservationism. Rather, such convenient, catchall terms generally are coined by those, like the governor, who have no idea why anyone would oppose a Disney, or any other ``growth.'' It helps one get a grip on a vague entity that seems, unbelievably, to want something more than money.
So what is that something? I would call it Virginia herself: the living, wild, majestic Virginia some still find more real than the business enterprise governed by Allen.
Opponents to flabby development, clear-cuts and river dams have been struggling to express that Virginia for the past 30 years. Their challenge, particularly in recent years, has been to translate their values into economic terms. Words unrelated to money don't penetrate the governor's mansion anymore, possibly explaining in what manner he has gone deaf.
How can one describe a dark hemlock gorge in dollars? How explain, in terms of revenue, why a bobcat or creek should exist?
Since I have little space, and those busily seducing Disney have little time for distractions, I hope readers can dredge up, from some childhood memory of the real world, the picture of another Virginia. She is a stranger to many who represent her, a Virginia that rarely makes it to the General Assembly, who lives outside legislative offices and projected revenue.
This Virginia can be found in the Blue Ridge Mountains at twilight, steeped in quiet mystery. She wanders with ponies through the wild grasses at Wilburn Ridge. She runs in the rivers called Shenandoah, New, Cowpasture, Calfpasture, Jackson and James; she breathes in their wind of sycamore, rapids and mud. She is home to the bobcat and whippoorwill of Bottom Creek. Her roof is higher than the yellow smog of Richmond; it glitters in thousands of stars over Haw Orchard Mountain. She speaks through the wind over McAfee Knob, Fort Lewis, Tinker, Big Walker, House and Apple Orchard mountains. She rests in the green Catawba Valley; she blesses us all each winter in the deep snowdrifts of White Top.
She is my Virginia. She is my theme park, my development and growth, my goal for those who will live here 100 Octobers from now. She is my capital, my governor's mansion, and my house of worship. I suppose I would say, unfashionably, I feel for this real, living Virginia the reverence one might feel for a church - a cathedral built long before my time, and meant to last long after. Some greater authority than the governor and his commercial agenda presides over this Virginia - and with a wilder, more interesting imagination.
I cannot express in financial terms why such a Virginia should exist. Why should there be life? What need have we for black bear, hawks or freedom of spirit? Why, anyhow, would someone love a mountain more than shopping malls? I can't say.
In fact, in considering this Virginia, and watching various state officials fall over themselves to please Disney, I have questions of my own. What Virginia do they represent? What is their final goal, the chief good they are seeking?
``Economic development'' is the ultimate concern we have all heard about for the past decade. I suppose it seems a flimsy answer because it's another of those jargon terms, meant more to disguise than convey the truth.
Cutting through the jargon might not only save us time but help explain ourselves to the next generation. If Virginia's greatest love is money, let's admit as much to the children for whom we are working so hard to grab it.
Let us remedy their confusion at church on Sunday. When they hear that they must not store up goods for themselves on Earth, that they cannot serve both God and mammon; let us explain that these words ``were meant for Judeans. In Virginia, we serve the economy.''
Furthermore, let us amend the fourth-grade history books to make clear that the names of our early statesmen - Jefferson, Washington, Henry, Wythe - are merely quaint fossils deposited on our forests and counties; that what these men valued is outdated, and retards economic growth.
How about our rural and architectural heritage? Perhaps we'd better explain that, while Jefferson would have gagged at the sight of a Disney, we must teach ourselves to call it beautiful today, because it will bring us security and revenue.
Courage and freedom? Well, it was fine for Patrick Henry to prefer death to the serving of idols, but - let us note - he had no mortgage to pay, no VCR to maintain, no one to put through school; he had not, perhaps, heard of The Economy.
And life, liberty and happiness? Do we tell the fourth-graders that pursuit of these has inspired us to destroy the last of their wilderness?
If so, let us appreciate the profundity of what we are doing. Will our irreversible decisions allow them to choose life, or will they be stuck with our own bleak acres of asphalt, a dead landscape of traffic, Kmarts and McDonalds? Are we sure that theme parks and malls will so adequately smother their desire for living things, for remote trails, wind on a bluff? Will they inherit our strange brand of happiness, our dull god, our preference for comfort over life?
If we think they might not, perhaps we should thank God, give them the keys, and commit ourselves to the asylum now, while there still lives unharmed something of a Virginia they can love.
Liza Field lives in Wytheville.
by CNB