pie if we let these few remaining open spaces be

pie if we let these few remaining open spaces be destroyed. If we permit the last woodlands to be turned into building boards and comic books; if we drive the few remaining wild birds and animals to zoos; if we pollute the last sweet air and dirty the last clean stream and widen our roads for traffic through the last of the silence — then Fauquier, Loudoun, Clarke, and Rappahannock will become no place to five, and little more than another indistinct blur to future travelers.

Making leaders

We need open space because it speaks silently back to our roots, measured in the centuries of national business, military and political leaders and of American presidents who have chosen to make this American countryside their home.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner says, “It seems significant that the distinct downturn in our literature from hope to bitterness took place at almost the precise time when the frontier officially came to an end in 1890, and the American way of life had begun to turn steadily urban and industrial. The more urban it has become, the more frantic with technological change, the sicker and more embittered our literature and, I believe, our people have become.”

A rugged lot

The essential issue here is not to help the farmer, or to figure out if land can most profitably be used by the farmer — or by the developer.

Farmers are a rugged and self-sufficient lot. They have not come whining for help, and should be given no more consideration than any other business people, except in tax rates for keeping their land open. Open land and trees and streams give everything and demand no tax costly public services — nothing.

The public policy issue here is how to lock down tough zoning safeguards for timber, agricultural and conservation land to protect the watersheds and woodlands in areas of the region’s ecosystem, which serve to clean the air and like a great sponge soak up and release drinking water downstream to supply the