It's safer, easier to look at and a whole lot easier to listen to. There are 30 miles of sagebrush and speedgoats between the islands of Big Piney and Pinedale, one between Piney and Marbleton. Piney called foul, Pinedale thumbed their collective nose. This served to create a subtle undercurrent of political tension, which has been carefully preserved over the generations, and is maintained to this day by sporting events and Rural Health Board meetings. Somewhere in that same general continuum, within Big Piney there was evidently some familial spatting or other logomachy, and one faction disburdened themselves of the other, gathered up their Marbles, and went off and built their own town on the bench above Big Piney.
Islands are, well, pretty insular.
We need to build bridges, real or conceptual, and reach out to some of those other islands. Spring, when flowers bloom, birds sing and the bright warmth of the sun makes carrying grudges more of an effort, is a great time to think about these sorts of things. Young men's fancy turns away from snowmobile motors and generally finds itself falling toward young women, and the season is one of rejuvenation. Calves, fawns, kids and minnows magically appear. Lakes and relations thaw as the ice and snowdrifts melt away from the broadcast frigidity of another winter.