To the editor:

As I look out over the pastures behind my house, I see my younger self wading through the fields, covered in mustard dust, headed towards the creek for a quick dip to wash off. I see the cabin on the hill where my grandpa, my dad, and I spent many nights eating either the fish we caught that day or grilling something near the pond, already waiting for my dad's morning breakfast. I hear the chirps and cries of squirrels, distantly a turkey gobbles, the snort of a deer on top of the hill gives me a startle. I smell the fresh air from the distant storm, rolling the yellow fields from the west off of the White River. I can see everything. The silence is deafening. It's the way I grew up, and the way I wanted to live forever.

My son is by my side...well mostly. He's two now and he may never get to enjoy what I did growing up. He may never know the life I planned for him. The lifestyle I cherished. The memories he'll never get to have here. The Midstates Corridor could take this from him. He'll be forced to move with my wife and I to somewhere we don't recognize and be around people we don't know. He'll never get to appreciate what I did here in quiet Dubois County. The small town life will be a mere fairy tale for bed time. It's something I lose sleep over. He doesn't deserve this.

I beg you to say "no" to this corridor. We have done without it this long, we can do without it moving forward.

What we stand to lose as a community outweighs what we stand to gain. This will turn our quiet way of life into a relic washed away in traffic noise and loss of peace. Please, if not for me, do it for my son. And to him, you will be greatly remembered as those who stood for what he needed and what he deserved. What we all deserve. Peace and security.

—Jarred Keller
Dubois