The Collapse CLXXXVIII: Walking And Talking

 31 October 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius

My sincerest of apologies for what became a six day delay in responding. I have been far more busy and distracted than I had anticipated. This should not have curtailed my conversation with you, but it has. I am thankful that Pompeia Paulina reached out to you (figuratively of course; I have no idea that you will ever see the correspondences) – although as before, I resolutely refuse to read what she wrote. Conversations have a right to be private between parties.

What have I been up to? Walking and talking, dear Lucilius, walking and talking.

Birch, as you might recall from your visit here, lies almost the end of the Gemstone Valley, a small valley with a Northwest/Southeast axis wedged between Gemstone Mountain and Sandstone Mountain, perhaps 25 miles deep and 3 miles wide. The state highway that leads from Highwayville heads Southeast enters Birch at about 20 miles, where it takes a hard East turn towards Kentucky City. “Behind” Birch is the remaining five miles and a county road, which leads up to a pass with a reservoir (Yes, I know. A dam with a flood plain. Not much I can do about that.)

The point of recounting this geography with you is help you understand what has been in my mind for the past week. One of course, is simply supplies. The second is defensible space and the most likely areas of potential attack.

To answer both of these questions, I needed to do a lot of walking and talking.

I have, by my estimate, visited every house that more or less “falls” within the greater Birch Area. There are, more or less, 50 such dwellings, of which perhaps 35 remain inhabited with others being vacation homes or homes of those that have moved away.

I stopped at every house.

Of those houses, around twnenty-five are what I would call “well disposed” to the idea of having something a bit more firm that what we have now. Those people come in a variety of ages, conditions, and units, from the Alcmaeonid clan with 9 members (parents, six children of various ages, and a mother-in-law) to the Widow Sappho, a 90+ year old veteran of life here with a mind as sharp as a tack. Between these two extremes are singles, couples, small families, retired folk.

The other ten houses...perhaps simplest to say that my decision in the trial was not well received by Terentia and her family and friends and they had no problem informing me of the fact. There were no weapons drawn specifically, but they were clearly in evidence. Pompeia Paulina sent Young Xerxes along with me to shepherd me through this sort of thing.

I detest animosity, Lucilius. But I can at least say that I did all I could to reach out.

One of the points of discussion was simply to find out if – and that was big if – people were interested in this proposed grand experiment (which, for the record, other than the rather unfortunate encounters above, everyone was). The second was to assess how folks were “set up”, as the saying goes.

Interesting facts about performing such an exercise:

1) Perhaps to no-one’s surprise, people here that live hear year round are generally better prepared than what I suspect most are, the climate and conditions being what they are.

2) People are generally quite happy to discuss their armaments.

3) Food was an unspoken issue (except for the Widow Sappho of course, who assured me she had “enough in her root cellar to outlast this Great Depression just like her parents did the last one”).

The last point reflects how much uncertainty and fear there is. People are genuinely concerned about what comes next.

Which leads me to my description of our area above: geography. Or perhaps more precisely, geography, likely threats, and defenses.

The reality is – given what I have just described above – any threats are likely to come one of four ways. The first one – from the Northwest of Highwayville -is the most likely, but also the one we would know of the earliest. And coming from the road the other way – from Kentuckyville – while much closer, would likely also be with sufficient warning. To our Southwest, Gemstone peak is likely high enough to prevent all but the most determined and energetic from making an attack (and I suspect we have few modern Hannibal’s in our modern world).

Which leaves the road to the reservoir behind us and the much lower range to our north, over which lies the wilds between Little City and McAdams – concerning in that someone could come over them largely without encountering anyone else except us.

This letter has gone on too long already, Lucilius, so I will leave you with this question for the next one, a question that has been on my mind ever since I started these walks: How do we make a defensible space when the very nature of where we are is not defensible?

Sometimes life comes down to playing the hand we are dealt.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca