Rebuilding Bountiful

Hint: the neighborhood pictured on the right is not within my community-of-the-mind called Bountiful. Look down that road between the people-coops, how it recedes in perfect perspective to a vanishing point beyond which lies a lights-out horizon, wastelands, badlands, no-man's lands... but most definitely not the lane that leads to Bountiful.

The "Bountiful" I have in mind is a simple community that was the object of a fictional journey--one might even say pilgrimage--portrayed in the 1986 movie The Trip to Bountiful on which a Depression-era elderly lady wants to return to her childhood home just once more before the Reaper comes a-callin'.

"Bountiful" to me calls to mind the cornucopia, the fabled horn of plenty, rich harvests and rural life. It calls to mind life on the land with trips to town or village, trips made on foot or bike or horseback, trips that provide time to smell the sweet grass, the rich, newly turned earth, ripened fruits, autumn leaves...

Rebuilding Bountiful requires a devolution (yes, you read that correctly: "devolution" with a "d," not "revolution" with an "r") that diminishes the megalopoli and does away with industrial agriculture. Rebuilding Bountiful requires a return to religiosity--I'm suspicious of so-called "spirituality--and a reverence for life and its bounty. My own pilgrimage of the soul led me to Traditional Catholicism, the Social Teachings of which merit much further study than is currently accorded them, but The Catacombs here in the Southern Cone are non-sectarian, non-denominational and non-discriminatory, though the coordinator is firm in his faith and beliefs and pleased to proselytize when permitted.

There is no guarantee that "returning to Bountiful" will provide an idyllic life, but staying behind in the cities is almost certain to ensure that an idyllic life will not be on one's agenda.