Althouse: "Park officials can’t patch up the fallen rocks and perch them back on their original site. Once people intervene..."

April 16, 2024

"Park officials can’t patch up the fallen rocks and perch them back on their original site. Once people intervene..."

"... the attraction is no longer a product made by Mother Nature. 'If you restore it, then it becomes anthropogenic. It is art rather than something natural,' said Elizabeth Cottrell, a geologist at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. 'That doesn’t invoke the same wonder and awe of nature.'"

From "Lake Mead visitors caught on video destroying ancient rock formations/National Park Service rangers are looking for information on two male suspects in the vandalism incident" (WaPo).

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57 comments:

Rusty said...: If there's any irony in this world the rock will roll down and crush them both.; 4/16/24, 8:34 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Those two fat white (drunk?) morons need to be strung up and castrated.; 4/16/24, 8:36 AM
Larvell said...: They should say they’re protesting climate change.; 4/16/24, 8:41 AM
Bob Boyd said...: What Democrats are doing to our culture and institutions.; 4/16/24, 8:42 AM
Bill Crawford said...: Aren't people part of "Mother Nature" just like an earthquake or violent storm?; 4/16/24, 8:42 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Is there any way to harness leftwing Jew hate and leftwing Trump hate - and blow it at those two morons?; 4/16/24, 8:42 AM
Howard said...: +/-200,000,000 years in the making; 4/16/24, 8:47 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Those two fat white (drunk?) morons need to be strung up and castrated.

What does their skin color have to do with it?; 4/16/24, 8:48 AM
rhhardin said...: They're just completing what nature failed to do.; 4/16/24, 8:51 AM
rehajm said...: …yelling ‘Free Palestine!’ so its all okay…

Seriously I’m in the camp where this is all part of the evolution of the planet. Billions of years of wind and rain and the rest of the elements is less than then twenty seconds and two dooshbags…; 4/16/24, 8:54 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Is it a crime? If I pick up a pebble in the Lake Mead park and toss it to the side, have I committed that crime? What if I took leak behind a large boulder the size of a small boulder- crime or not?; 4/16/24, 9:01 AM
robother said...: When your State's main tourist attraction is neon lights and slot machines, don't expect respect for nature (or even their own survival) to be high on the list.; 4/16/24, 9:02 AM
Wince said...: I was waiting for a RoadRunner to come up behind them and "Beep Beep" so that they jump, fall and the rocks land on their head.

Or something like that.; 4/16/24, 9:06 AM
Whiskeybum said...: I understand the point about be wary of confronting assholes like this, but looking at the rough terrain, the probability that zoom was used with the camera, and the fact that the videographers were unnoticed by the perpetrators, it seems like they were far enough away that they could have just shouted "Hey - you are being videoed!", and that would have likely been enough for the damage to stop.; 4/16/24, 9:08 AM
Birches said...: I doubt those guys think they're doing anything wrong. They're just screwing around in the desert. From the article, it sounds like the whole recreation area is protected, which makes it difficult to discern just how special that little portion of sandstone is.

I mean the government completely filled the area to make it a lake. Gobs of people visit every year and leave their trash and whatnot. But throwing boulders is 6 months in prison? I feel like it's just a bit of outrage bait.; 4/16/24, 9:08 AM
Old and slow said...: These guys were obviously obnoxious idiots. But these are just goddamned rocks, and I find it very difficult to get all worked up about a few of them being shifted around. I live in the desert southwest, and I appreciate scenic boulders as much as the next guy, probably more, but this just isn't worth getting all fired up about. The condemnation is class based disapproval and mother nature worshiping bullshit.; 4/16/24, 9:12 AM
Birches said...: Here's a description of the trail. Yes, they're idiots but these aren't like the most sacred red sandstone that the Wapo is making it out to be.; 4/16/24, 9:13 AM
Old and slow said...: Howard said...
+/-200,000,000 years in the making

Yes indeed Howard, just like every other bit of geology on earth. So is it all sacrosanct, or just the prettier bits?; 4/16/24, 9:15 AM
gspencer said...: "who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever"

Loutish behavior toward a creation will bring us to a standstill; details at 11 with Live Action News.; 4/16/24, 9:22 AM
tim maguire said...: This is why we can't have nice things. No matter what it is, sooner or later some idiot will destroy it. A few years in jail. Put 24-hour camera surveillance in their cells and broadcast their new lives on screens at the entrance to all national parks as a warning to others.; 4/16/24, 9:27 AM
gspencer said...: And who's to say that they weren't trying to get a road runner,

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/F2GoL25gCsw/hqdefault.jpg; 4/16/24, 9:28 AM
Jamie said...: A few years ago, my husband and I went to Ireland. Near the Cliffs of Moher is an area called the Burren, one of the strangest environments I've ever seen. I recommend an image search to see what I mean.

It's limestone bedrock from which the soil has been almost entirely eroded. Because of the way limestone weathers (essentially it dissolves in rainwater), the area is crisscrossed with cracks an inch to maybe a foot or so wide and anywhere from inches to several feet deep. In these cracks, unique microenvironments thrive, including the majority of the species of butterflies found in Ireland. The reason there's no soil is... farming, specifically sheep husbandry, going back to prehistory and continuing until at least the Middle Ages, if memory serves.

I'm not defending the actions of these yahoos, but I offer this example to reinforce the fact stated above that humans are also part of the natural environment.; 4/16/24, 9:28 AM
Aggie said...: What is it with dopes like this? A few years ago it was a fat Scout leader, breaking off and tipping over rock pedestals. Can't get my head around people like this - brings out the inner atavist.; 4/16/24, 9:33 AM
Narr said...: The little girl was the only one present with a brain.

Sad.; 4/16/24, 9:34 AM
William said...: Yeah, okay, they're jerks who deserve prison time. As atrocities go, however, is this any worse than organizing traffic blockage to all of our nation's major airports on the same day or cutting up a portrait of some guy who used to own slaves....The site looks pretty much the same before and after. Nature performs some marvels but rock balancing is not its most impressive stunt.; 4/16/24, 9:35 AM
Jersey Fled said...: “What does their skin color have to do with it?”

If they were Native Americans it would be another whole stupid argument.; 4/16/24, 9:36 AM
n.n said...: Black... red rock. There is precedent.; 4/16/24, 9:43 AM
Rit said...: Isn't Lake Mead a man made lake? The whole damn region has been shaped by anthropogenic forces. Did mother nature put the Hoover Dam there? Do you think that white bathtub ring dozens of feet above the waterline is natural? How ignorant do you have to be to be outraged over this?; 4/16/24, 9:43 AM
The Vault Dweller said...: Something similar happened out in Utah about 10 years ago. I believe in that case the men who toppled the rocks said they 'we're prompted," to do it. I've heard that phraseology is sometimes use by Mormons to indicate they felt God wanted them to do a certain action. Of course one could argue that when Man is out in nature and sees a rock formation oh so precariously balanced that it is only natural to feel the urge to conquer nature and exert your agency over it. Honestly those rock formations are an attractive nuisance.; 4/16/24, 9:49 AM
Enigma said...: This type of behavior is rampant in national parks and monuments, at least when the social media influencers are not walking backwards off of cliffs when taking selfies. It's not often caught on video.

* The current site of the Petrified Forest National Park was largely 'mined' of wood and then sold a very long time ago. They now have "wood police" to stop and search suspected cars...even though they sell legal petrified wood products in the gift shop.

* The Grand Canyon was once controlled by...an entrepreneur...who intentionally polluted the only water source with mule droppings and then sold bottled water to hikers...

* A German visitor to Yellowstone put a baby bison in his car because "it looked cold." And the it had to be killed because the mother rejected it.

* All sorts of ancient sites (worldwide) have been grave robbed. (NOT racial -- see Egypt, Greece, Turkey, China, etc. for more of the same). Check out the local museums to see some of what the robbers took.

This is human nature, unfortunately.

Peace thru vandalism...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_thru_Vandalism; 4/16/24, 9:59 AM
PM said...: What a couple of wads.; 4/16/24, 10:18 AM
Levi Starks said...: There was a puppy trapped under the rock.; 4/16/24, 10:25 AM
Big Mike said...: [Shrug] Eventually the boulder would have come down due to natural forces. Erosion never stops and gravity doesn’t either. I don’t condone what the two guys did, but are you going to throw them in jail while you release murderers to kill off witnesses? Especially when that boulder was someday going to come down anyway?; 4/16/24, 10:31 AM
Kevin said...: I’m so old I grew up in a time when rocks were freely picked up and moved.

Now all children are allowed to throw is moral outrage.; 4/16/24, 10:42 AM
Indigo Red said...: Once people intervene..."
"... the attraction is no longer a product made by Mother Nature. 'If you restore it, then it becomes anthropogenic. It is art rather than something natural,' "

Well, there you have it. The answer to the age old question, "What is art?" If nature does it, it's a wonder. If man does it, it's art. All that's left is a question of quality.; 4/16/24, 10:51 AM
Smilin' Jack said...: Yes, Hoover dam is a man-made object, but men are also part of nature. If these two jackholes should wind up in a man-made prison, well, sometimes Nature does beautiful things.; 4/16/24, 11:09 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Why is the national park service looking for information on suspects when it should be looking for information on perpetrators?; 4/16/24, 11:34 AM
Original Mike said...: "I live in the desert southwest, and I appreciate scenic boulders as much as the next guy, probably more, …"

Clearly not.; 4/16/24, 11:38 AM
The Real Andrew said...: On a number of hikes I’ve seen rocks piled up into small towers. They might be landmarks, or milestones, or just a fun thing to do.

Is that art? A crime? A custom? A scar upon the landscape?

If a Native American tribe did something like that, and it has lasted over the years, it’s a sacred place.; 4/16/24, 12:00 PM
John henry said...: About 20 years ago my wife and I visited Arches National Park. All over the park there were cairns that people had made by stacking rocks on top of each other. Not huge rocks, though a few might have been as big as 12" but mostly what I would call large pebbles, the size of a small rock. Some might have been 6-10 stones high. I even did one to commemorate our visit.

Arches is the only park I ever noticed this in.

So how did this differ from what these people did?

We both moved rocks from one place to another. We both destroyed nature's natural arrangement of the rocks.

Not condoning it and they probably should be fined $25 each or so.

But I don't see the big deal. No reason to hang and castrate them as Joe Biden wants to do. (Shouldn't you castrate them first? If they are dead, castration is no big deal)

Is "cairn" the right word for 6 rocks stacked on each other?

John Henry; 4/16/24, 12:01 PM
Temujin said...: WTF is wrong with people?

I swear, the older I get, the more I prefer dogs to people. I remember when I used to shake my head at people who said that. Now I'm one of them. With plenty of reasons all around me, every day.; 4/16/24, 12:23 PM
Josephbleau said...: Its a park, so leave it alone and let the tourists see some natural erosion and pretty shapes. But we only like the cute rocks, the regular rocks can sod off. No one cares when the drab old limestone in a quarry gets crushed for aggregate to make your swimming pool.

Outside of Salt Lake City the Bingham Canyon Copper Open Pit is a huge tourist attraction, I hope no philistine ever tries to fill it up and spoil the scenic spectacle.; 4/16/24, 12:28 PM
Howard said...: Old and slow. No it's not. The oldest rocks are about 3.9 billion years old and the youngest were just made a second ago. 200 million years is the approximate age of the Navajo sandstone. That's my guess of the formation that was Disturbed.; 4/16/24, 12:35 PM
Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...: "When your State's main tourist attraction is neon lights and slot machines, don't expect respect for nature (or even their own survival) to be high on the list."

As a resident of NV, who regularly takes advantage of (and expresses and demonstrates great respect for nature AND who can see both The Strip AND Red Rocks from the parking lot of my Albertson's) I hereby declare your statement to be boring, ill-informed, pointless and, ultimately, noxious.; 4/16/24, 1:09 PM
Rit said...: Cairns are a very common way that trails are marked in the desert or above the tree line. Building them randomly is a good way to send hikers off into the wilderness and get them lost. Building cairns or even worse, dismantling them, is a really foolish thing to do.; 4/16/24, 1:38 PM
wildswan said...: Those rocks look out of place to me. I bet they were put there by the Park Service to keep people from falling off the edge of the platform. Just look at how the rock moves up in smooth rounded layers toward the platform where the men are fooling around. You see smoothed layers, one on top of another which is how sandstone forms and how its surface looks. Then you see some big, rough boulders on top of the sequence of layers. What geologic process forms sandstone into big, rough boulders instead of smooth layers? Holocene Park-Service-Faulting?; 4/16/24, 1:47 PM
Rocco said...: “Park officials can’t patch up the fallen rocks and perch them back on their original site. ‘Once people intervene the attraction is no longer a product made by Mother Nature. 'If you restore it, then it becomes anthropogenic. It is art rather than something natural,' said Elizabeth Cottrell, a geologist at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.”

Don’t Downplay the Role of Indigenous People in Molding the Ecological Landscape; 4/16/24, 1:49 PM
Rit said...: Howard said: 200 million years is the approximate age of the Navajo sandstone. That's my guess of the formation that was Disturbed.

Is that the same guess you have for the formations that were "Disturbed" by the hundreds of feet of water that submerged the canyons that once bounded the Colorado river after the Hoover Dam was built?; 4/16/24, 2:14 PM
Mason G said...: Re: cairns...

Rangers at Yosemite National Park have asked hikers not to stack up rocks to create their own cairns, and to dismantle ones made by other park visitors. The National Park Service (NPS) posted the request on Facebook, together with a video of a ranger kicking over a particularly outsized cairn built by members of the public.

However...

The National Park Service (NPS) explains that every park has different rules regarding cairns, so it's best to check before you go.

Some parks (including Acadia, El Malpais, and Hawaii Volcanoes) have cairns that are maintained by staff to help hikers stay on the right path, and should be left alone. However, parks like Capitol Reef and Yosemite don't have any official cairns, and hikers who follow any they find could become lost.

Yosemite's advice on dismantling cairns is an exception. Generally, the NPS warns against tampering with any rock piles you come across, neither adding to them nor kicking them over.

So, as with many things in life, it depends.; 4/16/24, 3:02 PM
Jim at said...: I blame Joe Biden.
Holy Moly!; 4/16/24, 3:08 PM
FullMoon said...: Guy dropped cell phone under the rock.
What would you do?; 4/16/24, 3:41 PM
Joe Bar said...: One one hand, I hate those losers doing that.

The most comments on the Instagram post are "Why didn't you do anything?" Well, one guy looks huge, and they both appear scruffy enough to think that they may respond violently.

On the other hand, it's a couple of sandstone rocks. They would have probably crumbled eventually. Was this really that bad.

But why do that, anyway? People are weird.

What are the rules in that area? I am somewhat surprised that that kind of access is allowed.; 4/16/24, 6:55 PM
Josephbleau said...: "When your State's main tourist attraction is neon lights and slot machines, don't expect respect for nature (or even their own survival) to be high on the list."

When you are driving distance from LA and the Mob rolls in, what is a small state supposed to do. They should have had a state militia on the border and imprisoned all trespassers?

Yes they acted with moderation and let the goombas take over Las Vegas. And you are blaming the people of Nevada? And at the other end, at Frenchman flats the DOE is firing nukes, and we flood the only river with a dam giving Lake Mead and give the water and power to everyone else. Everyone wants a piece of Nevada and you blame the people!!

Goddamit, there is Navy and Air Force all over from Fallon to Nellis, Tonopah, Area 51. Nevada has done its part, by God. Yucca Flats I support as a safe energy deal but Harry Ried the blackest cancer that was ever in Nevada killed it for desire for his own money, like other Dem senators.

In North NV in Washoe County, In Empire/Gerlach, there used to be a good town. Bruno knows. The gold mines are healthy at $2300 per ounce. Let Nevada alone you pricks!

Water and gold!!!; 4/16/24, 7:35 PM
Josephbleau said...: The truth emerges, 85 IQ people loose a cell phone.; 4/16/24, 7:37 PM
Joe Smith said...: Yes, they're morons.

But we are part of nature, not above it.

Whatever a bunch of drunk yahoos do is perfectly natural.; 4/16/24, 8:07 PM
Bunkypotatohead said...: The University of Wisconsin in Madison would have paid those boys $50 grand to do that.; 4/16/24, 9:21 PM
Enigma said...: @Mason G: Rangers at Yosemite National Park have asked hikers not to stack up rocks to create their own cairns, and to dismantle ones made by other park visitors. The National Park Service (NPS) posted the request on Facebook, together with a video of a ranger kicking over a particularly outsized cairn built by members of the public.

About 95% of Yosemite visitors are crammed into the relatively tiny Yosemite Valley or on a handful of roads and trails on the cliffs and mountains next to the valley. There's rarely a need for cairns, as the trails are heavily trod and/or in a narrow flat area near a cliff, unstable and slippery waterway, and/or rock wall. The pathways are usually obvious as there's no other way through. I'd guess this rule may have been needed if artistic and social media people started placing cairns near cliffs for unique photos...but the cliffs, many many cliffs...; 4/17/24, 6:59 AM