School Bus Loading Zone

By Amy Catherine Hulshoff

Angel Peak (Fracking Reality Tour), Four Corners, NM

September 22nd, 2017

                    There is really nothing OK about what is happening in the Four Corner’s region. Not only is the exploitation of land and language difficult to swallow, but also the air itself is difficult to breathe. I don’t think any of us expected such an acidic environment, with such an awesome view. Even the view is stained with a low flying brown and green cloud that all but conceals the environmental impact the power plants and oil extraction fields have on this space and its inhabitants. We weren’t on site but two days before some of us began to feel ill and out of sorts. I could not imagine being forced to accept this type of pollution as my home, let alone as the fate of the home of my ancestors.

                   And for me this is not the case. I am able to get in the van and leave, to go home to my apartment and put this region far enough away that I am able to breathe again. Daniel Tso tells us it is all about choices. This does not seem like a place of choices, unless you are on the refinery’s payroll. They paint the pumps and water tanks green, as though we won’t notice them punctuating the landscape, drawing from an empty well. Ironically, some of these pumping stations are solar powered. Even the oil and gas companies do not bother to deny the simplicity and functionality of solar power. Nothing about this place is OK. Choice and agency feel are a phantom here.