Was the rock homosexual?
He’ll get fined, no doubt. When I lived in Zion NP some drunken chucklefuck was fined $500 for killing a rattlesnake. (BTW, Goblin Valley is a State Park, not a National Park.) I doubt the fine will be very substantial, though.
Of course you’re right; this all started because of his jerkish cluelessness and stupidity. But talk about sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind. …
Rocks on, rocks off.
The whole “protecting children” thing is bullshit. They wanted to tip the rock over and the safety thing was an excuse. They should be prosecuted for vandalizing a park.
Wrong and should serve time.
Soon I suppose we’ll have to just fence the parks off and talk about how wonderful they used to be when we were allowed to walk in them. It reminds me of that old Vietnam War saying about having to destroy the village in order to save it. In other words, we have to take away the pleasure of experiencing them first hand to save them.
Sort of like all that antique china and silver my mom kept carefully stored away in felt and containers because it was too nice to use.
I have mixed feelings.
That said, there has to be a balance. People have been defacing mother earth for as long as we’ve been on it. We call the old ones petroglyphs and the new ones graffiti. The modern attitude is not to repair the damage Mother Nature does herself or what people do, considering it part of the natural process of what happens in the interaction among earth, weather, humans.
I nearly cried when I saw what our Marines had done target practicing on Mayan ruins in Cozumel. Shades of the Sphinx’s nose! Near me some of the earliest explorers carved their names and dates into a beautiful rock formation on sacred Indian ground.
I just got back from a trip in that area and the form they handed out in the Petrified Forest kinda creeped me out. It said I was responsible for reporting people observed defacing or taking rocks from the area, asked for a description, time, make of car and license plate. Left me with an unpleasant taste in my mouth.
I wasn’t there to monitor my fellow citizens (mostly seniors) but to take a stroll in earthly splendor. And I would have confronted anyone I saw doing something destructive or mentioned it to a ranger. From the appearance of my fellow travelers I imagine most of them would have done the same.
Give them an age-appropriate consequence and shout it to the world. It might make a difference with a few young people.
The only conclusion I can come to given human nature is to keep people out or monitor them to the max. Both sound equally unpleasant.
Just reread my post and in anticipation of comments, I can acknowledge that senior rock hounds can be guilty of removing federal property. Didn’t mean to imply that it was only youth who caused problems.
Sisyphean. I like it.
I was upset to hear that these clowns had toppled one of the hoodoos at Goblin Valley State Park and I do hope that they are punished to to fullest extent of the law possible.
The formations are delicate and naturally topple from time to time, but this guy had to put effort into pushing it over. If they deemed the hoodoo to be SO unsafe, they should have had the children avoid the area and explore another portion of the goblin area (which is quite large) and report the “unsafe” condition at the ranger station.
People need to remember that visiting parks that showcase these natural wonders they should tread lightly and look, but don’t touch to make sure that they are preserved for future generations to come.
Actually, we dodged a bullet. The guy looks like a Homer Simpson type. We’re lucky he didn’t start a domino effect and take out the whole park, like when Homer went back in time and killed all the dinosaurs by sneezing.
Your classical reference for the day.
My aunt and uncle and their two children took a trip to Petrified Forest NP in the early 1970s. One of my cousins, who was about 13 years old at the time, picked up a piece of petrified wood about the size of a golf ball and stuck it in his pocket. They were about five miles from the Ranger station where they had parked their car. His conscious later got the better of him, and he decided to return the piece to the same spot that he had taken it from. When they returned from the day hike to retrieve their car, a Ranger with a pair of high-power binoculars around his neck approached them and said “your son is damned lucky he put that rock back.”
A several thousand dollar fine and a few thousand hours of community service should be sufficient. The community service can’t have any affiliation with his church.
Wow. This is classic. You can just see the “oh shit” happening in his brain as he tries to fumble for an explanation, and then falls back on, “You don’t have my permission to put this online!” and speeds off. Nice try, pal.
The Internet is going to eat him for breakfast. I’d feel a little bad for him if he weren’t such an obvious douchebag.
If the park service is that upset, then set the rock back in place with a bobcat. Bill the two guys that toppled it.
They probably won’t restore the rock because it was a hazard. But the damage is easily reversible if the park wants the liability of someone getting hurt in the future. The men should have notified the rangers and let them deal with it.
I think a large fine is more than enough punishment.
This is really silly.
The damage is not “easily reversible.” They can’t simply “set the rock back in place.” Rock formations like that take shape over millions of years, and the physical relationship between the rock itself and the substance holding it up is a very specific and rather precarious one. Pushing the rock off like they did destroys the balance created over millennia, and deforms the pedestal section enough that it would be virtually impossible to just sit the rock back up there again.
It’s not just about whether the park wants to avoid liability; it’s that you can’t just place it there again as if it was never toppled in the first place.
God I love the interwebs.
You want them to put it back up with their bellies and hands?
OTOH, that might make for a hilarious YouTube video…