There is a stereotype that anyone who leans right is automatically for all manner of things that violate ostensibly accepted social norms, including embracing a desire to ravage the landscape to erect factories, oil wells, outlet malls, or any other structure that will displace prairie dogs, sage grouse, or Graham’s Bearded Penstemon. But the spectrum of conservatism is rather broad, and there are some who would consider me a tree-hugger due to my desire to preserve wild spaces. For example, I understand there is an affordable housing crisis. Still, I look at the developments going up on the mountainsides that will become hotels and homes for a privileged few and think, “Did I blow out two knees fighting wildfires for this? Did I bust my hind parts so millionaires and billionaires who never sawed a single log and couldn’t tell a steer from a bull could come out here and play mountain man?”
So yes, berate me as a granola if you wish, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the forests and the deserts.
As far as Utah’s national parks, I’ve hiked Dinosaur National Monument plenty of times. I’ve walked Capitol Reef one time, and I’ve hiked Canyonlands National Park twice and Arches once. Arches is known for Delicate Arch, which has become a de facto symbol for the state of Utah. Because of the large number of rock formations clustered relatively close together and its proximity to the road, Arches is easier to navigate and access by car, and it is very popular. The views are magnificent and the features and landscapes are irreplaceable. So I was steamed, to say the least, when I read that over the weekend, fresh vandalism was discovered at Arches. Someone—or several someones—had strewn toilet paper hither and yon and used white paint to deface the red rocks with smiley faces and some inane word referencing an equally inane video game. It is disrespectful, juvenile, asinine, and destructive. Not to mention harder than hell to mitigate.
Local TV station Fox 13 spoke with a retired park ranger who discovered the destruction while hiking with a friend. She was aghast at the vandalism, and I share her outrage. But I found it interesting on whom she pinned the blame.
To me, it was a result of the shutdown, and it symbolized the vulnerabilities of the parks to what is happening with the shutdown without them being protected… I would say close the parks because they are not being protected. That essential part of the national park mission of preserving, unimpaired, for the benefit of future generations is not happening.
Again, I share her anger. I genuinely do. But I think her assertion is one that could be best described as something that may have been alfalfa hay either on the previous day or earlier in the morning prior to passing through a bovine or equine digestive tract.
Allow me to explain.
In my days of hiking, camping, and firefighting, I have seen wet meadows torn to shreds by ignoramuses on ATVs and side-by-sides. I have cleaned up litter left by half-wits who could not be bothered to police up their own garbage. I have responded to fires started by morons who did not bother to put out their campfires. And, (and this is particularly offensive), I have seen ancient petroglyphs and pictographs ruined by sub-human primates who obviously should never have been allowed within 50 feet of a firearm. But those incidents have usually been the exception, not the rule. The spate of graffiti, wanton destruction, and desecration at its current level is, as far as I can tell, a relatively new development.
Not far from where I live, on the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, is a popular hiking trail that leads to a hot spring. The Forest Service has been threatening to close the trail and the spring, and I don’t blame the agency one bit. Mrs. Brown and I went there a few years ago just to check it out. At the trailhead is a toilet. As Mrs. Brown was getting on her pack, I heard a gagging sound that could have come from the pits of hell. A young woman was running out of the toilet, seconds away from depositing her last three meals on the parking lot. The smell reached me from some 15 feet away, and I could see through the door the piles of beer cans and assorted trash stacked up there, accenting a much-abused latrine.
After that sad display, we shouldered our packs and started out. The first thing I noticed was a rock wall covered in red spray paint. Funny, I didn’t know gangs tagged national forests. Or maybe it was just a standard-issue idiot. Still, that takes a little forethought. Who takes spray paint to a national forest? The further we went, the more depressing things became. The trail and the trees were “decorated” with garbage, 12-pack boxes, bikini tops, pool toys, diapers, and all manner of refuse. Someone was blasting a boom box, somewhere in the forest. You could have called it “ghetto” or you could have called it “trailer park,” but you couldn’t have called it a National Forest for much longer.
Not only was this “pre-shutdown,” but this was pre-Trump 2.0. This was back during the Biden administration, when the moon was in the Seventh House, Jupiter was aligned with Mars, and we were all marching toward a glorious progressive future.
Some of the carnage could be attributed to the influx of people from other states, who had no heritage in Utah, and therefore no appreciation of or respect for the state’s inherent natural beauty. And not everyone is raised to show respect for anything other than themselves. And there are cultural differences to be considered as well. But it would be folly to blame everything on the transplants and outlanders.
The seeds of this kind of behavior were sown and watered long before the shutdown. The shutdown and Trump had nothing to do with this.
It is true that the COVID lockdown turned people somewhat feral as they moved their lives online and forgot how to be human while staking out claims on toilet paper in box stores across the nation. And social media and video gaming do allow people to indulge their most narcissistic and destructive behavior without consequences. Or at least delay those consequences.
We have created a society in which people have become so self-centered that they can act on any impulse simply because the mood strikes them at the moment. It has been said before, and shall likely be said again, that this is one of the consequences of participation trophies and empowering people to throw tantrums at the mere hint of an opinion. Like it or not, this is one of the inevitable results of DEI. Not only did it become all the rage to be offended, but it became an absolute must to scream, yell, march, post, vent, gripe, destroy, burn, boycott, and make sure that everyone sees you. The dominant thinking was not so much about social justice as it was about social status.
Once you remove the barriers of social behavior, you should not be amazed when Dr. Moreau’s beast-men go on a rampage. And you can’t expect them to stop when they get to something that happens to be sacred to you. You cannot tell people to go wild and then be shocked when they oblige. If you breed a demographic that believes that chaos is a part of living their truth, you have no business feeling affronted when monsters do what monsters do. Since all bets are off, why not spray paint the rocks at Arches? Who cares? If it is socially acceptable to set fires, break windows, and sow chaos, should it be any surprise when that chaos comes for you?
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