The Man With A Dream
By Don Winters

One morning early, as I took up my prayer and coffee on my veranda, I observed a man climbing one of the hills that ring the village where I live.  His bright teal blue T-shirt marked his progress upward through the thick foliage.  He was young; he moved differently than I do.  When he reached the newly formed scar near the top he stopped and surveyed the sweeping view that stretched out before him; the village at his feet giving way to the grand vista of mountains that spread to his horizon.  He and the scar he'd slashed and burned on the hillside were my horizon.  His brush piles had burned into the night one evening the preceding week.  He walked the small cleared plot, pausing to admire it.  Then he sat on the barren hillside and I felt as if  I were reading his thoughts, "I have this wonderful land.  It is my peice of land and I will build a house for my family.  Land is power, and someday this will be for my children."

He sank bush stick poles at the four corners and adorned them with red ribbons, marking his territory.  All morning he'd disappear into the trees adjacent to his cleared property.  I'd see one fall and in a while he'd reappear and sink fence posts around the entire perimeter of his denuded lot.  He felled his neighbors' trees until late morning and then descended the hill dreaming, I'm sure, of the house he'll build for his family on the hillside where he had defaced God's handiwork.

  I'm certain he dreams of the house he'll build on his naked ground.  I wonder if he will surround it with flowering trees and bushes or the carcasses of wrecked automobiles and the rusted hulk of a used up washing machine.  Others will follow to build homes on the hillside.  It is certainly possible to build a house in harmony with its natural setting, to be tucked in among the existing trees.  I wonder if the others to come will have any appreciation for the hillside's pristine beauty and the songs of the birds who give us daily concert.  It would be sad if the entire panorama of the village's horizon were to be ravished and violated...years of growth destroyed in one short season by good, caring solid folks who happen to be blind to natural beauty.

    In Belize we read, write, talk and hear a lot about ecology, eco-systems, environment and conservation.  But we do not seem to learn to put these good ideas into practice in our everyday lives.  These are not lofty concepts to be carried out only by the government or big business; it is the responsibility of everyone to help preserve the beauty and natural treasure of this lovely country.

    I am neither judging nor condemning the young man with hs dream.  He is merely doing what he knows...this is the way such things are done.  The modern culture has not instilled in him the desire nor even a dim perception of blending with his natural surroundings.  He toils mightily, oblivios that his labor is the desceration of an intricate eco-system,

  
Who's Free Lunch?
By Don Winters

It seemed an odd spot for a spider web.  The rising sun's horizontal rays transformed dew droplets on its delicate lacework into miniature sparkling jewels.  The spider, about the size of a dollar coin, was busy dining or spinning; from my vantage point in a rocking chair on the veranda I couldn't discern which.  Above the second story veranda a utility wire runs from the house diagonally to a pole about fifty feet away.  The wire crosses a tall hibiscus hedgerow which borders the property.  In the past I'd observed small clouds of miniscule whitish flies, no bigger than a grain of rice, swarming above the blooming hibiscus.