At this time of year, many of us take a little time out from our frantic schedules to look back and take stock of the changes, events and developments that have shaped our lives over the past 12 months. 2001 has been a year of many firsts for me personally and for everyone living in the United States who doesn’t reside under a rock, oblivious to the new place we call home.

The year began what seems a long time ago in January’s cold with most of us wondering who was our real president and how did he get into that position with his brother’s state of Florida being not the “Sunshine State” but the major pivot point in our democracy. Gore supporters were stinging from the fact that while their candidate won the majority of the popular vote, George W. would be at the nation’s helm due to 200-year-old regulations and governmental protocol.

Many of us were asking questions about the usefulness of old systems in the newly emerging Third Millennium. We had survived the scares of Y2K, which proved to be a mere blip for everyone except those selling and profiting from others’ fears and insecurities, and the paper and program shufflers whom we were counting on to keep the nation functioning and existent. This past summer we learned of deepening economic woes for the nation, listened to urgings by the president to get out and spend, and heard Jessie Helms — icon for his own brand of hard-line conservativism — announce he would no longer be the voice for North Carolina after seemingly endless decades.

Some things didn’t change so much. We were witnesses once again to human rights atrocities in China, to the wars and strife broiling in Latin America and much of the Middle East involving our allies and our vital national interests. Crazy weather patterns brought continuing drought and floods to states and nations that needed it least while gene-splicing and biotechnology continued their intrusions into our homes, our daily vocabulary and onto our dinner tables. We were reminded of our own fragility as thousands of animals were burned overseas and travel restricted for fear of still unknown viral infections and remedies while hamburger eaters and cattlemen looked on in horror. And those were just a few of the reports.

The previous eight months of news and events seemed to vaporize when we flipped our calendars over to Sept. 11. No one was exempted from the radical transformation of business, government, military, transportation, and security dealings and the issues in daily life, which continue to affect many of our actions and nearly all of the news. Terrorism is no longer something that only happens in Colombia, Angola or the Golan Heights, and anthrax can be delivered to anyone by that friendly person in the white truck for only 34 cents. Priorities across the board are being rewritten as we search for new ways to insure domestic tranquility and move ourselves and our nation ahead in a very different world, more volatile, more suspicious, and more nervous than the one we lived in back in the spring. Unfortunately, through all of this reorganizing and emphasis shifting there have been deteriorations of our personal freedoms, cuts in social programs, environmental protection and other issues, casualties of the massive change. This different view leaves little room for some of the former imperatives we held, now reduced to unaffordable luxuries. Before we can have cleaner air, healthy families and unlimited freedoms, we have to rid the world of possible threats, which may mean sucking oil from every Arctic caribou calving ground or spending trillions on warfare. It’s definitely been a year to look back on and wonder how it all happened in a mere 365 days.

On a personal level it has been a big year of firsts for me. My wife and I are completing our first full calendar year as mountain residents, all four seasons in their glorious entirety. Road names and details of 15 years in Raleigh are giving way to new places, faces and concerns. I worked my first tailgate farmers’ markets as an organic grower, finding out first-hand why so many farmers are selling out to developers. I made the first foray into local politics by speaking at two of Jackson County’s Smart Growth meetings, meeting our representatives and listening to the concerns others were sharing about how life here is changing rapidly.

We picked the first fruits from grape vines planted at our farm in 1998, went to our first third-time-around wedding, held our first year of monthly events at our farm, built my first spring-fed cool house, filed the paperwork for our first nonprofit educational corporation, brought a third dog noisily into our home, attended my first Bat Mitzvah, had our first conservation easement dedication at the farm, submitted my first articles to this newspaper, planted my first ginseng and buried my first coyote.

It’s been a year full of firsts for us all, but I’m not putting away my almost remarkable 2001 List of Firsts yet. With almost two weeks still to go in this year, there remains the opportunity for additional items to be added to the collection, events that may yet make everything else on the list pale in comparison. It’s the time of year when miracles often happen. World peace could still ring across the land, bin Laden could turn himself in and send our troops home, George W. could make protecting the environment his top priority, and what the heck, I might win my first lottery. I’ll not put my list away until just before midnight on the 31st, when I’ll be starting a new one. I’d hate to miss out on what may be the best of the last of the firsts.

(John Beckman is a building contractor and operations manager at Unahwi Ridge Community in Jackson County. He can be reached at www.unahwiridge.com)

 

Back to Top
The Smoky Mountain News