Last weekend I hiked a couple miles through the county grounds, stalking the rhubarb that still grows, despite all odds, behind the Eschweiler buildings. It's a lot more difficult than it was when I wrote about it here in my first blog entry in June 2006:

I pick bouquets of rhubarb from the abandoned garden plots . . . Pies, cakes, breads and muffins ensue. The world is good when there is rhubarb pie in it.

And that’s how I discovered the disappearance of the tennis courts and emergence of silt fence markers across from Hansen Golf Course.

Bottom line, in case you don’t know, is that a huge retention pond shaped like a reproducing amoeba will cover the old county nursery--one of the prettiest places in the county—behind the tennis court area. You may not have seen it because walking there has been perhaps a tad illegal. . . 

How much has changed since then. The nursery is completely obliterated. I suppose traipsing is even more illegal now than it was then. Plastic fences in trash-bag black and orange mesh have been strung along the silt fence markers. And the roads have been dug out, their entries chained, to make it hard for the scavengers in SUVs to poach wild asparagus and domestic rhubarb. It all  seems a little extreme. 

The retention ponds are in, though still not finished. You can walk around them now and wonder if they will ever look like something other than craters left by strip mining or meteors. But walking into the landfill is even worse. The great views from almost any vantage point are gone. No matter where you stand, you can only see a short distance before your sight line is interrupted by another odd mound. It's like no terrain I've ever encountered: defensive berms everywhere, with nothing to defend.

Was this the plan? Or was the dirt just dumped anywhere? If so, it will have to be completely regraded for any use that might be made of it. And that will cost more money.

The rhubarb, though thin (it's late this year), was good and made a splendid pie.  Something lives, still, on the edges of the desolation. I hope more will creep in: it will make the place less creepy.

“The last rhubarb pie on the Fourth of July” was one of my mother’s rules. I don’t know where it came from, although it’s probably a good idea to stop picking early enough for the plant to build up the sustenance for the next season’s crop.

I just took mine out of the oven. A hint of freshly ground nutmeg, the grated peel of a whole orange, custard to cut the sharpness just a bit, and crumb topping just because: it’s fairly spectacular.

This really is the last rhubarb pie. I made it from stalks I’d culled from the County Grounds last year in my minor acts of civil disobedience—or criminal trespass, depending on how severe you are feeling today. Since it’s the Fourth of July, and since that’s about freedom, maybe you’ll lean toward favoring the pursuit of personal happiness that doesn’t harm person or property.

Or maybe you prefer restrictions. Lots of people do these days.

I like things a little wild, even if it leads to more effort. It was hard wading through the tall weeds that had overtaken the old gardens in just a year. This year, the weeds are nearly insurmountable, and the driveways to the Eschweiler ruins have been dug out so you can’t drive there.

You’d think there was treasure in those fields, the way the land has been made inaccessible.

In a way, there is. Not the strawberry rhubarb gardeners had tended for decades; that’s gone to dry woodiness. But among the thistles and teazle and Jerusalem artichokes grows wild garlic, a plant of almost unbearable beauty.

Someone’s put down sheets of plywood to give shelter to the Butler garter snakes. These “sudden fellows in the grass” still seem like treasures in the surprise they bring.

Later tonight, when the kids and I come together, we’ll eat the pie and give thanks for the ground in which it grew. I hope we’ll remember to love what we have before it’s gone forever.