STILL LOOKING AT THAT MIRROR

Dear Jim,

It has been three fourths of a year since you published the "It's Time to Look in the Mirror" issue of the Zephyr. The "Feedback" issue showed an overwhelmingly postitive response. Nine months later I still hear people talk about that "Mirror" issue. I thought the issue was an incredible look at the conscience of us all, including me, my friends, fellow environmentalists as well as yourself and the Zephyr.

You posed a peculiar dilemma for the environmental community. This dilemma is difficult to describe. When I look in the mirror, I can't reach through, grab what I see and pull it out to look at it closer. I have to study theimage carefully from out here and that is not easy. In looking in the mirror I think you found a generalized and subtle criticism of environmental movement tenets. You can correct me if I am wrong. But I understood what you wrote was not meant as criticisms of specific organizations but of a cluster of attitudes which pervade preservation literature. Your criticisms tend to come from a web of connections between communities and the surrounding public lands.

Environmentalists tend to emphasize a few portions of this intricate web and obscure the changes in the web from environmental policies. People sometimes cite the statistic about counties with the fastest growing economies having large areas protected as wilderness. The kind of county this refers to is Pitkin County, CO, home of Aspen.

There is a contradiction here because I, like other environmentalists, also complain about the "Aspenization" of the west. In this sense wilderness corrupts and alters the rural world we hold dear. Perhaps it is not wilderness that corrupts but people like me who rush into the rural west to live near the lands we love. Since my wife and I moved here I guess you could say we moved Moab two people closer to Aspen. Environmentalists appear to have a hands off approach to managing rural growth in the face of the public lands management that we advocate.

There are trade-offs. Some local communities push activities which are far more harmful than wilderness. In Moab we have mountain bikers, dirt bikers, ATVs, 4x4s putting pressure on the public lands. The same is true of a group of communities in central Utah. Salina, Richfield, Monroe, Marysvale are putting their tourist hopes in mechanized recreation.

In Moab there is some balance. There is none in those other communities. There is a complex relationship between local communities, local citizens, traditional land uses, visitors, recreational users, land designations and local and national economics. When one piece of the web alters, so does the rest. Thus a bad economy and terrorism hurt the local Moab economy and the pocket books of local people. A rich guy from Telluride can decide to open an upscale food store resulting in the loss of two businesses, one of which I will miss, one I won't. A New York developer builds trophy homes and a high end resort above Poverty Flats.

To lessen this kind of dependency local economies need diversification. (Thanks for publishing Howard Trenholme's articles.) I think you understand this very well. I think your examination of people like yourself, me and my friends was superb. But then I have a dense head and thick skin.

On the other hand we have people like Governor Leavitt promoting Utah as a technology center (as well as tourist destination), sort of a 22d centurysilicon desert, but he can't give up his 19th century prejudices.

Some things are better left in the hands of cretins.

Changes occur whether we like them or not. Changes occur because of ideas we promote even though not all changes may be the intended results of our ideas. Sometimes communities change for reasons beyond our control or comprehension. Some are simple such as when Boulder, Utah changed from a dairy farming community to a cattle ranching community. Some are complex and seemingly cancer-like, such as what is happening in Summit County.

Guess I am rambling. This web of connections is difficult to grasp and harder to discuss rationally and coherently. Ultimately I wonder whether wilderness, the tourist economy, and the amenities of living in a clean, safe, and beautiful southern Utah will be our savior or the cause of our own Aspen. Wilderness may be my own personal anodyne but it may not be a panacea for the ills of our state. Sometimes it seems we only debate whether Aspen is better with wilderness or if Aspen is better with cows, ATVs, dirt bikes and oil wells. Only the Zephyr asked if we could have something different than Aspen. If we look closely at ourselves and the landscape behind us in the mirror we may find another way to go.

Wayne Y. Hoskisson

Moab, UT

wayne@moci.net

PS. Thanks for the stuff from Herb Ringer in the latest issue.

RETURN OF THE "EARTH RAPER"

Well JS,

As usual you are articulate, well versed and full of crap. Your article "Standing Room Only" left me in a state of disbelief, so I went back and read it a second time.

First off, you have aligned yourself with the Sierra Club's (and China's) selfish agenda of population control. Without coming out and actually saying that people should not be allowed to reproduce as they see fit, you did manage to very effectively imply just that. So why not just say it Jim? Why didn't you set the limit? Say, what, maybe two kids each?

I also love to continually hear you moan about all the people that expand Grand County's population, move to Moab, and generally degrade YOUR quality of life. Is everyone that moved there after you did in the wrong? Maybe they like it there for the same reasons you chose to move there. I do not necessarily like all the people that move to Richfield. Things here are not the same as when I was a kid, simply because of the increase in population and a lot of the "trash" that comes with it. But I do not get up on my soapbox and whine about it. If Richfield ever reaches the sorry state that your flaming liberal island community has, I will gladly pack my stuff and be gone.

Then there is the issue of private property (materialism) and how it affects the state of our planet and our natural resources. Between your desire to have the government control all lands, your problems with population expansion, and now your dislike of private property, I would have to conclude that you advocate communism.

I don't give a damn if you, or your 30 year veteran friend of Arches, can find any place away from the crowds. You are living in a place of your own design. You fight and fight to get land set aside as wilderness, parks and monuments. Then you cry because people come to visit them in ever increasing numbers. Kind of ironic, isn't it? GSEMN (Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument) has seen almost a hundredfold increase in human intrusion since being designated as a monument. YOU destroy the very places you supposedly wish to protect. Explain that.

You stated that the current events have made your local issues appear almost trivial. If there is any positive effect of those attacks, it is that is has revealed most of the liberal agenda, environmentalism included, for what it is. Trivial.

Have a nice day.

(Name withheld by request but aka)

earth_raper@hotmail.com

I truly believe that beneath this surly exterior beats a heart of gold...JS