Though she can’t do anything to stop federal agents if they show up, she said, news travels fast in a small town and she thinks outsiders who don’t know the lay of the land would struggle to catch locals who would almost certainly know they were coming.

So that’s the lay of the land.

Isabella, who “majored in psychology,” wastes no time in letting her opinions be known — I mean, I’d hang back a little, get the lay of the land, instead of thinking my suggestions, based on a day’s experience, needed to be taken seriously.

“What we have here before us is an opportunity to end a corrosive practice where, strategically, people avoid primaries to see what the lay of the land is, and then pick the candidate best suited for November after the primary has been settled on the other side,” Harmon said.

An initial masterplan by the colonial authorities took into consideration the lay of the land and designed measures to prevent disasters.