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June 2, 2006
Two Stories from the West
Tuesday when I picked up my accumulated mail from the post office, there was a postcard from a friend with a stunning photo of the aptly named Delicate Arch in Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah, foregrounded against a glorious sunset on the front. On the back was a message informing me that some guy had recently climbed said arch. He did it not once but several times during a two-hour period.
It pissed me off, you know? The guy claims he did nothing wrong in climbing the arch, because he didn't use any protective equipment, and the regulation prohibiting climbing was loosely worded enough that he didn't technically break any laws. That has been changed: now it is officially illegal to climb any of the named formations in the park.
A couple of years ago I went with my family to Kartchner Caverns in southern Arizona near where I grew up. The park rangers kept stressing that the cave was delicate and asking that no one touch anything. My family was all annoyed about this: "What's the big deal if we decide to feel a rock? It's just a rock," someone said. "It's hardly worth it to go, if all you can do is look at the formations and listen to someone tell you not to touch anything," someone else said.
I was as annoyed with their grousing as they were with the regulations. "I don't see what the big deal is," I said. "They don't let you go up and feel the texture on 'Starry Night' or run your hands along the biceps of Michelangelo's David. If something is precious and fragile, it's precious and fragile, even if it exists in nature rather than art."
I hate people who think the entire world is their playground/ pantry/ toilet, and that they should be able to do whatever they want wherever they want because it will amuse them, and take whatever they want from wherever they want because they desire it, and dump whatever they want wherever they want because they find its presence offensive and/or unnecessary, all regardless of the effects of such actions on other people or even the earth itself. Yes, we must feed, clothe, warm and wash ourselves, but we don't necessarily have to destroy beautiful or unique places in the process.
I also hate people who think the prime reason for the existence of anything is an opportunity for them to make money, as seems to be the attitude of various companies discussed in this story about the horrible results of privatization of water in California. That should be a tagline for a commercial: "How expensive is your water?"
Posted by holly at June 2, 2006 12:17 PM
"If something is precious and fragile, it's precious and fragile, even if it exists in nature rather than art."
Yes! Good for you, Holly!
If you get out of your car when driving along Trail Ridge Road, above timberline in Colorado, you get breathtaking views of 14,000 foot mountain peaks when you look out and you get spectacularly beautiful flora in the alpine tundra when you look at your feet. The walkways are clearly marked because if you damage a tundra flower, it might take as long as forty years for it to recover. Forty years is nothing to a cave or a sandstone arch; the damage is, in human perspective, permanent. Holly, please, never lose your righteous anger.
Luckily, most of us are not tall enough to reach David's biceps anyway but I completely agree with everything you said.