Stop farming, eliminate people

Wednesday, June 12, 2002 Napa Valley Register

Dear editor,

As one of the legions of the uncaring, selfish, greedy and ignorant, who wish to farm in the hillsides and, thereby, turn our beautiful county into a barren, waterless wasteland, merely for the base motives of personal profit and bragging rights at cocktail parties, I wish to thank Mr. John Stephens for his commentary in the June 5 Napa Valley Register and publicly declare that, because of it, I have finally have seen the true path.
Mr. Stephens has convinced me that it is urgently necessary to do something before grapevines cover nearly every acre of Napa County. Not for us the monocultural, aesthetic disasters of Burgundy, Bordeaux, Tuscany, the Rheingau and the Mosel.
Unlike regular working people, who appreciate and revere the splendors of the natural world, I confess that, after reading his letter, I realized that my family and my neighbors and I are the sort of people who just want to milk our vineyard "cash cows" for a few minutes a day, while carelessly ruining the viewshed for everyone else, before we trot off to the bank.
We must be stopped! We must learn the lessons of history before it is too late. To quote Mr. Stephens directly, "All of us are in jeopardy unless we protect our streams, our forests, and our world." "Famine," "pestilence," and "barbarism" are lurking just beyond the gates of the future, if vineyard development remains unchecked. Beware the fate of the Easter Islanders !
To hold off this imminent devastation by boutique hillside wineries and their show-off owners, I strongly suggest that we all join together in a great movement aimed at returning Napa County to its pristine, natural, pre-people condition. Let's just have steelhead, bears, foxes, deer, mountain lions and so forth -- no wineries, no tourists, no vineyards, no people, no problems. Let's strive for a beautiful, untouched wilderness which we can proudly leave as a legacy for future generations.
To that end, I suggest a simple, compelling solution. We should all go live and lead our lives somewhere else. Oregon, Utah, Montana and Wyoming, among others, have lots of room. In Oregon they even grow grapes. But above all, and with the certain knowledge that history will judge us, not by our words, but by our deeds, I urge everyone in Napa County to make the hard choice and do the right thing. We must preserve our Valley by leaving it.
Mr. Stephens, I am counting on you to lead the way.
Charles Smith