WHICH ‘POPE’ ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

Editor,

Ned Mudd (June/July), points out that for a variety of imperative reasons we must shrink our numbers. He then blames the Pope. I agree, but perspective is needed, and I guess I must ask, which Pope.

Several nations enjoy——a word I use quite literally——negative population growth, although that is a fact that puts the knickers of our own boom boosters in a knot. They believe, wrongly, that we must have population growth to have economic growth, although admittedly population growth is a great subsidy to land speculators. This brings us to a quote by economist Kenneth Boulding, ""Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.""

But negative-growth nations, Italy, Spain and Ireland, are predominately Catholic. Ireland, has one of the strongest economies in the world. So, many Catholics, do not necessarily allow the Pope to dictate their family sizes.

My gripe with the Pope, while major, takes second fiddle to recent Republican administrations which cut funding to International Family Planning and with the environmental community which remained largely silent as this happened, in the case of Bush the Second, based on the outright lie that the funding goes to fund coerced abortions in China. As a result, women around the world lack adequate birth control and often essential health care. And, the moderate majority view of most Americans on the subject is sub-planted by the extreme religious right, an affront to the concept of representative democracy upon which our nation is founded.

But we must also look at America’’s love affair with growth, as outlined in THE POPULATION FIX: Breaking America’’s Addition to Population Growth. We are so programmed and indoctrinated that growth is ""good"" by the corporate media that we are unaware of the population tsunami that has swept our nation since 1970 and that, if not soon curtailed, could match India’’s growth in the 20th century, including our reaching ONE BILLION.

While it is a topic many environmentalists wish to dodge for a variety of political-correctness reasons, the reality of the most resource-consumptive, polluting, greenhouse-gas- producing nation (although China may over take us) reaching one billion is my worst nightmare and, back when the Sierra Club would still discuss United States growth, that eventuality caused director Carl Pope to refer to us as ""the world’’s most overpopulated nation.""

So, it seems, the Pope——the Catholic pope, not the Sierra Club Pope——enjoys a great deal of company when it comes to blame for a population crisis which 58 national academies of sciences in 1995 warned MUST be dealt with. Science alone, they wrote, cannot continue to solve population-based problems.

Kathleene Parker

Rio Rancho, NM

REPLY FROM NED: Ms Parker was a tad wry when she mentioned that the See Errors used to discuss population. So maybe that's a swipe. The Klub here is a no-show. Nice folks but not in the game. I found this website for us - http://www.geohive.com/

Very snazzy re: global population stats. From my cursory exam, it appears that the human population might be shrinking in a few choice spots. But the real story is that the numbers continue adding up. China, India, even the U.S. (thanks to immigration). Africa. Japan is losing heads. Russia (maybe in part due to people leaving?). And there's no question that a reduction in population in 1st world industrial giants will tilt their respective economies, especially where the demographics favor an aging population. Who's gonna support us old bastards? Low totem pole Hispanic immigrants? And funky economic juju might skew 3rd world countries in who knows what directions? So we're likely to see a big time, see-saw, roustabout, jam-up, cluster fuck of a world soon enough. Ok. The alternatives look grim as well: Crashing ecosystems; robot cultures a la George Orwell; etc. Better to return to the basics and live like nice, well fed, primates. It worked for Sitting Bull.

POPULATION AND LIFE STYLES

Dear Jim:

Referring to the first portion of your current issue, the only recognizable public "group" of people who are looking ahead to what reality will be like if current numbers keep increasing is the same group who oppose not only illegal immigration but amnesty for same. In addition to all their other reasons for feeling that way, is the fact that more humans in America means a greater strain on all our resources, and that includes the loss of open space.

Last week it was all over the news that Mexican President Vicente Fox spent time in Utah, which has been quite friendly to Mexican immigrants. Utahns really need to start thinking globally (our borders) and acting locally (working together).

Of course the current problem is greatly exacerbated by urbanites either moving to rural Western areas for retirement or just building second homes. Many people living in urban areas such as Los Angeles (myself included) have also become frustrated at the overcrowding and want to escape. A formerly 15-minute commute now takes me one hour. Cities across this country have been flooded with poor immigrants trying to make a living. My gut instinct is to "escape" to a place like Moab, but I am very aware that I would simply contribute to the ruination of the place, by adding to your current problems. Bottom line: Too many people!

I might refer all who are concerned with these problems to Terry Tempest Williams' book The Open Space of Democracy, an excellent series of essays dealing with nature, open space, and our relationships with our government. Her local community, Castle Valley, just north of Moab, banded together to fight rampant development.

A quote: "We have made the mistake of confusing democracy with capitalism and have mistaken political engagement with a political machinery we all understand to be corrupt. It is time to resist the simplistic, utilitarian view that what is good for business is good for humanity in all its complex web of relationships. A spiritual democracy is inspired by our own sense of what we can accomplish together, honoring an integrated society where the social, intellectual, physical, and economic well-being of all is considered, not just the wealth and health of the corporate few."

And from Ed Abbey: "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."

Crista Worthy

Pacific Palisades, CA

LESS ENERGY...LESS PEOPLE

Dear Editor, Ned Mudd is totally right-on in your most recent Zephyr. We don't need more energy. We need less people. This is the most pressing issue of our times and one that has followed Homo Sapiens like hungry crows from the dawn of time, only the scale has changed. In the prehistoric age, if too many people lived in one small valley, they might just fall inexplicably sick. They didn't know how disease spread, but they did know that if they went wandering into another valley where, lo and behold, they were no longer crowded by their own excrement, they were happy and healthy again. In later years, Homo Sapiens discovered industry and turned their settlements, places like 19th century London, into smoke-plagued hell-holes. Neither excrement nor coal-burning are, in and of themselves, bad things. We've got to excrete, no getting around it. And we've got to stay warm. But too much excrement and too much smoke isn't good for anybody. In our contemporary world, we have graduated from over-populating the valley, the island, the city or nation as we once did. We have now taken our excrement and smoke to a planetary scale. We have ramped up the impact of our existence from the local and transitory to the whole planet on an instant time scale that is nothing less than geologic.

Mainstream environmentalists think they have the answer to this conundrum: conserve, recycle and explore clean renewable alternative energies. Guess what, folks? Unless we embrace the idea of radically and voluntarily reducing the human population of planet earth, all of our good intentions and good works will only put off the inevitable day of reckoning when Mother Nature does it for us. There is a whole science built on this notion called "Demographics" which studies the distribution of animal populations. Homo Sapiens is an animal and subject to all the same distribution issues as any other. Disease, disaster, catastrophe, war, you name it, overshoot is alreadyhere. We have exceeded the carrying capacity of our environment and are running it into ruin. If we fail to reduce our numbers, all the technological nano-wonders of clean energy and conservation is just humanity whistling through the graveyard. We now find ourselves in a strange world where environmentalists lobby for modern, clean nuclear energy. But again, why bother making more energy? We don't >need< more energy. Really, we've got more energy than we know what to do with. We're infatuated with it, reeling drunken energy junkies who don't want to face the end of our hundred-year binge. The mass of humanity is unconcerned and embraces that great triumvirate of modern deities: Science, Technology & Human Potential. "Don't worry Evan, genius problem-solvers using the scientific method to develop new technologies will save us all from our own worst excesses!" If I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet on it. We'd like to think that Star Trek is real, that we have mastered reality in such a way as to produce magical technologies, that science fiction is now, as it was in the 19th century, a true and accurate vision of an achievable future. Again, I wouldn't bet on it. This is what our ol' pal Friedrich Nietzsche meant when he wrote "God is Dead". Who needs religion when you've got the fruits of science?

Nietzsche probably never foresaw a time when those intoxicated energy junkies, drunk on the fruits of science, would also be apocalypse-believing God-fearing fundamentalist religious zealots. The worst of both worlds, I say. To paraphrase Abbey, who himself probably borrowed it from Mark Twain, if you aren't insulted by now, you weren't reading carefully enough. Thanks and kudos to The Zephyr for standing up to the juggernaut of wishy-washy sugar-coated wishful-thinking pollyanna-enviro-recreation corporate-oligarchy-compromises with grace, dignity, honor and humor, yours, Evan Cantor Boulder, yada yada yada

AT LEAST WE ASK THE QUESTIONS?

Sir,

I thoroughly enjoyed your original article and have been following the comments and feedback on the subject of selling our wilderness to tourists. Well done on stirring up the mud so effectively. Additionally I read the cover article on you in a recent edition of High Country News. I’ve had many thoughts since reading the HCN article and was also prompted to go purchase my own copy of Desert Solitaire.

First off –– it seems apparent you feel the same regret that Abbey did. The CCZ has shown an wonderful spotlight on Moab for years, likely resulting in more people coming there and more environmental damage. A double-edged sword can cut very deeply.

Second –– a stray thought, based on my not yet finished reading of Solitaire: maybe we deserve the damage. The US and its consumerist behaviors are damaging environs throughout the world. There is some justice in having to live more directly with the consequences of these actions. Admittedly it will be our descendants who live with the consequences, but that sounds more reasonable than leaving the rest of the world to deal with the outcomes of our overindulgence.

In the end though, reason and compassion prevail and more damage to our planet in the names of prosperity and consumerism is bad. Unfortunately population growth and the middle-class in constant search of places to spend disposable income are powerful forces. Thank you for at least raising difficult questions and putting more meat on the bones of discussion.

Best Regards,

Toby Brown

Salt Lake City, UT

WHO’S "IRRELEVANT?"

Stiles,

I recently read the story in High Country News about you and The Zephyr. Congratulations. The fact that you have survived for almost 20 years now is testament to the quality of your paper, and especially in light of the opposition it sometimes receives. I was particularly surprised, however, to read Heidi McIntosh’s comments on behalf of SUWA. For her to call your paper "irrelevant" and to arrogantly sniff that she "doesn’t even read it anymore," made my BP rise just a bit.

I have been a longtime Zephyr reader and save most of my back issues. To update Ms. McIntosh on what she’s missed, just in the last year, let me fill her in—The Zephyr has

continued to speak forthrightly and courageously about development and urban sprawl, Stiles took us to Cathedral in the Desert last year to show all of us this beautiful place and to remind us that it still lives , its staff, especially Martin Murie has eloquently opposed the war in Iraq...surely Ms. McIntosh thinks THAT is relevant. Mudd and Stiles continue to tread where few dare to go, especially in Utah, to the subject of over-population and over-consumption. Stiles dared to criticize the religious right in this country and proposed that Christians start looking at what Jesus Christ really said, instead of letting Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh do their thinking and talking. Isn’t that something SUWA would be interested in? And there was an excellent history article about Native Americans and the way they were treated by White people in the 19th Century. Should we assume that Heidi McIntosh and SUWA think the treatment of Native Americans is "irrelevant" as well?

Finally, more than anything else, The Zephyr continues to allow an open discussion of the issues in the Feedback section. Last month, when pro-SUWA writers bashed you about the head and told you to shutup, I was proud of you for printing their idiotic comments anyway. I have little respect for people who REFUSE to listen to the other side of an argument. Thinking now of Heidi McIntosh’s comment that she doesn’t read The Zephyr anymore, isn’t that EXACTLY what President George W Bush says about papers HE doesn’t like? Something to think about.

Sincerely.

Joel Gregory

Los Angeles, CA

MORE FROM LLOYD PIERSON on NATIVE AMERICANS

Dear Jim,

Ms. Karen Hastings has reinforced your opinions about the treatment of our aboriginal population. Unfortunately she does it much like you did, one sided. She also misconstrues my original letter in that she seems to portray me as an Indian hater when that is far from the truth. I understand op-ed pieces can be one point of view but feel it is of benefit to present the other side too. Ms. Hastings not only doesn’t understand that she put words in my mouth and as much as she hates stereotypes, provides us with one of her own: The Noble Red Man, which is a throwback to the 19th Century when people like her were helping Indians as much as they could.

I have never called Indians dirty, or lazy or ignorant and stupid and am not aware of what she means by an "Indian Princess." Her use of the word "squaw," although a perfectly good Algonquian word for female, is frowned upon by some politically correct today. And I doubt her life has been as hard as pre-Columbian Indian women had it.

She is puzzled by my statement that Indians contributed little to the general welfare except plants that they used. The list of plants they gave to Europeans is much longer than Ms. Hastings has provided. She forgot chocolate, the most important of all (joke). Contrary to her remark, I did not write anything about Indians eating dogs except that they did eat them. She drew her own conclusions.

Indian culture was fairly simple compared to that of Europeans. Indians provided no great contributions to the advancement of civilization, no great inventions, no great ideas, no great religions or political parties, or architecture. They were a receptive culture as they obtained horses, steel and iron, gun powder, guns, wheels, writing and other things that the Europeans already had. They had intertribal conflicts from prehistoric times as the archaeological record shows and were unable to provide a united front to European advancement because of tribal enmity. The few instances they were able to join tribal forces were most productive as they showed Custer at Little Big Horn. Unfortunately for them it was rare and in reality, the Europeans were simply another tribe to deal with but a tribe too big to resist.

The Europeans did not violate tribal laws when they occupied the lands of the aborigines, the law was: the strongest took possession. This is why the Commanches in the plains ran out the other former users of the Great Plains. The Europeans did not force the Indians into inter-tribal warfare as Ms. Hastings seems to would have us believe; it was a fact of life and some of the Indians seem to have enjoyed it, treating it more as a game as they acquired the other tribes’ wealth. And young Plains Indian males would much rather have had the excitement of raiding than sitting in the rock circle, high atop a mountain, trying to get a vision, teeth chattering from the cold.

In the past 50 years or more, our Indians, aided by people like Ms. Hastings, have received from our government a great deal of compensation for believed wrongs committed on them. The thousands of farmers, ranchers, soldiers, pony express riders, miners, men, women and children and others killed by the Indians have yet to have their descendants compensated by the richer tribes. Hastings and Stiles can now attend the Indian gambling casino of their choice.

One final note: I find it a tiny bit hypocritical for Hastings and Stiles to complain about the treatment the Indians got, yet offer no alternative for how it should have been handles and to place the blame on people now defenseless. Stiles and Hastings are enjoying the results of that inter-cultural war as they both, as do I, live on lands once occupied by Indians. Stiles, in particular, could have a problem as that part of Moab he lives in is sometimes underlain by prehistoric pithouses and Indian burials. The pendulum has swung to the Indians’ side and some happy Hopi could make trouble for Stiles. But I have no guilt over what happened, only academic interest and a desire to complete the entire story, not just telling the Indian apologists’ side.

Lloyd Pierson

Moab, UT

MORE FEEDBACK RE: LLOYD PIERSON

In his "Feedback" letter in the April/May Zephyr, Lloyd M. Pierson of Moab manages to accomplish once again what so many Westerners have done so often so disgustingly well for so long: made a feeble and inaccuracy-cluttered attempt at defending, or at least explaining away, Anglo mistreatment of Native Americans. Pierson’s "history" lesson is an example of the one-sided White-washing that for so long was the actual Politically Correct version of the Indian story and the West itself. Unfortunately, it and similar merde del toro continue to suffice as gawd’s own truth for far too many people.

Pierson’s frequently mispunctuated and syntactically-mangled highly selective half-truths, exaggerations, overgeneralizations, and judgments-from-the-white-perspective-solely discredit themselves to any knowledgeable reader, and in the June/July Zephyr Karen Hastings already dismantled many of Pierson’s specific claims. So I won’t waste more words and time on point-by-point refutations.

However, his "arguments" frankly aren’t far removed from that unfortunate genre, nineteenth-century Indian Hater Writing, but are merely clothed up a bit and thus all the more dangerous. And their cousins have been and are being used against all sorts of other brown-skinned people, not only by too many citizens of the United States, but also by too many Westerners. It’s not a new-fashioned form of PC to talk about the overall racism of the White West: both remain historical and hysterical realities in the present. Often, though, this racism is subtler than Pierson’s and arguably all the more dangerous for that fact.

Here in another canyon country, my wife and I live and work, our ten year old son plays, with a number of Lakota Sioux, by Western distances not all that far from the Oglalla reservations once known as Red Cloud, now Pine Ridge. Yes, Shannon County, dominated by the Rez, has often stacked up as the poorest county in the entire nation. Yes, the Lakota, like most Indian tribes, have more than their share of problems, internal as well as external: rampant diabetes, alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome. They have their share of bad-ass people, too, like any other race does.

But the racism here can be astonishing. A few years ago, as I was holding the door for a group of sixteen Japanese girls while they entered a Dairy Queen in the Southern Black Hills, a group of four older (but not elderly) locals exited between waves of our visitors. "My, look at all the little Indian girls," one of the two women in the smaller party remarked. Yes, ten (and more) little Indians.

The racism of course isn’t always so subtle. I also frequently hear the Lakota denigrated to sub-human levels through vile names like "Prairie Nigger" or "Chief Six-Pack" with terms like that and others most often and most viciously spoken of in public by "fellow Whites" who themselves hardly provide shining examples of humankind in numerous ways. In a region and nation running on empty except for the fossil fuel of fear, rhetoric like theirs is yet another manifestation of how we let that fear consume us, keep us from living.

We can look all around and see that brownophobia masking all sorts of other fears. In the West, Mexicans today aren’t far behind--and recently seem to have forged ahead of--Indians in being the people who receive the most fear and loathing. But pronounce "Minute-Men" another proper way and they’re "Mynoot-Men," "minute" here meaning small, little. This fact and the rush to judgment that a mere sixty seconds denotes thus makes the self-ascribed name speak truer than its coiners know.

Moreover, these days, encouraged by our government and media, we direct our hatred of the brown even more thoroughly at Arabs and Muslims and anyone we suspect might be one, the other, both (again, including Mexicans, those brownskins all look so much alike). Yet perhaps the kindest, gentlest man I have ever known is a current Muslim colleague and friend. And recently he attended perhaps the most inexcusable racist event of all that I’ve witnessed in recent times, and it happened up here in my own back yard of South Dakota. A few faculty from a university in our area, PhDs all, put on a play focused on Golda Meier, the late Israeli Zionist and leader. One of the faculty had both written and directed it. Of course there’s nothing wrong with a play, even a bad one like this one unfortunately was, focusing on Meier, an interesting woman of many great accomplishments.

But there is something wrong with it when, as in this case, it was a hagiographic version of her life, raising her to some level of sainthood, with nothing in the writing or directing or acting to indicate any irony or that she was a flawed person like us all, that she was indeed also often a spiteful, racist person. One line she spoke, quoted in the play, haunted me, haunts me still with its dehumanizing and false elements: "There will only be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs love their children as much as they hate us Jews." Because they are so much more subtle, these words are worse than the deplorable "raghead" or even "camel-fucker." As Chris Hedges notes in his fine book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, "in mythic war we imbue events with meanings they do not have. . . . We demonize the enemy so that our opponent is no longer human." Nevertheless, I overheard none other than a well-respected minister, a man I also like, speak glowingly of the play as "incredibly powerful."

Later Hedges notes that "Most national myths, at their core, are racist. They are fed

by ignorance." But at least racism due to mere ignorance is more venial than racism that isn’t. In part this distinction is true because there’s hope that this brand can be made right, corrected. But racism due to willful ignorance is another matter altogether. One of our moral duties as Westerners, as Americans, as humans, is to challenge all types of ignorance, in others--and ourselves.

David Cremean

Spearfish, SD

AND ANOTHER, RE: LLOYD PIERSON

Dear Jim Stiles,

To further support Karen Hasting's rebuttal of Mr. Lloyd Pierson's claims regarding Native Americans in the June/July 2006 issue of the Zephyr, may I add a few more points? I suggest that Mr. Pierson, and anyone else who might be interested, read "Lewis and Clark Among the Indians" by James P. Ronda. To quote from the preface: "what this book does offer is a full-scale contact study of the official and personal relationships between the explorers and the Indians. In 1952, Bernard De Voto wrote that 'a dismaying amount of our history has been written without regard to the Indians'. While much has changed since then, the history of exploration remains largely the story of the explorers themselves... but The Corps of Discovery was a human community living in the midst of other human communities...." Elsewhere in this book mention is made of a view through the white explorer's eyes that women in one of the many tribes the Corps of Discovery met on the trail to the Pacific Ocean were no better than slaves. This hegemonic and narrowed cultural viewpoint is classism at its best: the belief came from the idea that in the white culture, women who worked in the fields all day were considered "lesser than" according to our white American social scale. In actuality, the women who tended these cultivated crops were in control of the food, and they were an integral part of the tribe as a whole. The men were away hunting much of the time and the women of the tribe were not chattel, nor were they slave labor. Let's not forget to mention that our indigenous people of the Americas were responsible for domesticating wild grass, giving us, the white folks, that incredible plant called corn. Peyote, tobacco, and datura indeed. Corn is big business these days, folks, and don't you forget where we got it. I also encourage anyone interested in this ongoing dialog, including Mr. Pierson, to read another little book called "Imagining Indians in the Southwest: Persistent Images of a Primitive Past" by Leah Dilworth, which sheds much light on how the tourist industry in the early part of the last century objectified indigenous peoples to support the industry's view of the West in order to sell that skewed vision to tourists.

Robyn Slayton-Martin

Flagstaff, AZ

TAKES ISSUE WITH LEE BRIDGERS'S LETTER

Dear Jim-

In the ""Feedback"" section of the June/July issue of the Zephyr, Lee Bridgers opines that it is "" sad that [certain] white people don’’t know the difference between ‘‘sacrifice’’ and ‘‘exploit’’."" What is far more ""sad"" is the lack of critical thinking that went into his diatribe, of which his use of irrelevant racial essentialism (white people=exploitative ""turds"") attempts to smugly obfuscate. While certainly an ad homenim attack against someone unnamed, it appears to me a case of hubristic snob appeal toward those who believe themselves intelligent in the use of such essentialisms. However, this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

It may be that Bridgers is conveying popular sentiments in regard to how mountain-bike tourism existed in years long gone in bemoaning what it has seemingly become. While I may be wrong, it seems highly doubtful it has ever been much else than an industry combining mountain-biking and tourism, just as its own label defines it, regardless of any metaphysical attributions some in its community may believe it to objectively hold. We must face this, and realize the industry itself has arisen in context of an affluent society peopled with time on their hands and money to spend. It is, by and large, an industry of leisure, based in the entertainment of certain sectors of our society, and Moab largely dependent upon this industry at this point. To this contemporary and localized state of affairs, it may be prove important to expand our periphery beyond narrow horizons in order to understand the said industry was created through direct and indirect cultural and ecological exploitation.

As to the direct/indirect cultural exploitation, it mustn’’t surprise Bridgers if I remind him that his own industry ultimately grounds itself in lands grabbed from the Native Americans, rests upon contemporary American imperialism (and neo-colonialism if the ongoing situation in Iraq is any indication, which seems highly plausible), and economic dominance in the form of so-called ""free-trade"" with countries which now house our sub-minimum wage workforce. After all, given this last point, it is worth considering where many of the bikes themselves, as well as the garments, tents, and so on, are manufactured, that supply the industry Bridgers’’ is obviously so proud to be a part of, in at least its historical form anyway.

Ecological exploitation within the said industry should be plainly obvious. Should it be such a shock that the metals making up mountain-bikes come from mining, which entails roads into once wild places, toxic sludge, etc., or that the SUV’’s and huge vans taking clients out to desert and mountain trails guzzle gas in the name of fun and adrenaline laden excitement? I am also willing to bet this only scratches the surface of the industry’’s cost on an ecological level that far outweighs any new trails that are made, even if such are ugly and destroy the ecology around us further.

Bridgers seems utterly befuddled that there are so many new trails cutting here and there, going in every which direction in places he seems to frequent. Perhaps it is out of genuine concern for ""the environment"", or maybe it is an eyesore for his clients, or again, perhaps it simply reminds him what his own industry has logically become, but it should come as no surprise.

Though more esoteric, but highly relevant, are the narratives that give rise to such an industry from the outset. This country gained much of its land through military might, to be sure, but this was subservient to the Nineteenth Century doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which is, in short, our supposed God-given right to possess much if not all of North America. It almost goes without saying this meant dispossessing others of land and culture, but given the edicts of the time, they were regrettably dispossessed of their very humanness as a matter of course. Given this, it is no great revelation most Americans seem to want to ""cut a new trail"" both literally and figuratively. We want to go where no one has gone before, even if it is only a hundred feet away from some other’’s already established route and this has the added benefit that we invest little in mortal danger and even less imagination and creativity than our predecessors. Manifest Destiny has not simply vanished into thin air, but has become a commodity, an industry machination that appeals to being an American, or at least like one. Manifest Destiny is a mythos so many wish to live within even if for a short while.

It seems that Bridgers is disappointed that he is not the last to take part in such a myth. He even seems to posit a sort of primeval mountain-biking narrative of his own. Like Manifest Destiny this seems to have origins in the myth of Eden (given its obvious links to ecological dominance mentioned above, this makes more sense), but also has links to rather dubious myths of the same structure, such as communism, National-Socialism, and even Christianity. These all posit that there was once some Golden Age, where beings, or particular beings, lived in a harmonious state with nature. At some juncture, the harmony was broken whether by capitalism, so-called ""sub-humans races"", or temptation and greed in the form of serpent and woman, depending on the narrative context. These mythological structures supposedly explain why we are in the fix we’’re in and insist we wait for some promised day while we fight others who don’’t fit the pattern we wish to manifest, or who don’’t agree with our vision of the world.

In Bridgers’’ letter, he seems to attempt to equate his own ""primeval"" mountain-biking adventures, (way back, when?) with environmental-friendliness. Again, we should remain as honest as possible and look at the costs, not only in trails, both old and new, but of the industry itself upon the planet. This is most important if we are to hold others accountable for the continuity of such an industry. Let’’s face it, there never was a time when mountain-biking, or perhaps any of the outdoor industries for that matter, were set in motion for solely for individual spiritual enhancement or phenomenological reflexivity within our shared environment. These industries have sprung out of ecological dominance, of which is both created and supported through various narratives, and have aided in our making the earth largely nothing but a stage for human dramas and and a playground for our amusements. The feeble, even if joking, appeals to ""sacrifice"" one or another ""turd"" to the ""Rain God"" only demonstrates the disconnection and unaccountability with which Bridgers’’ appears to grace himself in regard to his chosen industry.

With Bridgers’’ letter and my response in mind, we might deduce that Bridgers believes himself to stand apart from all of us, while somehow simultaneously remaining within our shared environment. This is a contradiction, as well as an impossible, given that we partake of biological necessities, share language, interact with others in the ever-present context that is our environment by definition. No matter how much overgeneralization, or self-justification we allow ourselves, the fact we leave both literal and figurative ""trails"" in the world we live in, should never escape us. What we do, including thought and speech, has real effects in the world. Beyond any pretense, we must come to know that we all depend upon our planet, along with the beings inhabiting it (human as well as nonhuman) not only for our livelihood and entertainment, but on our very reason for being in a world at all.

Allen Schenck

Moab

STUNT CLIMBING HIT A NERVE

Stiles,

Your comments about climbers hit a nerve. Isn't all climbing stunt climbing. Climbing culture is a jock culture and so it's quasi-military,promoting qualities like teamwork,training and determination. All good things up to a point,but to the young dying to be more than they are,these qualities can cause frostbite,broken bones and death. Those who survive their ordeals seem to suffer a spiritual challenge most often described as elitism. All that looking down from on high. What's worse is some of the most ambitious have taken up careers as writers. Seeking a way to support their climing habit they become oxygen deprived gurus to the gullible. We are already a society of desperate heroes obsessed with goals and glory. (The hero myth isn't a bad myth, unless it's your only one.) The most dull of these turn into guidebook writers,selling the very places they claim to love to any stranger for a few bucks. Wilderness Pimps.

Thanks,

Larry Lindenberger

Salt Lake City, UT

GET RID OF THOSE CARTOONS!!!

Reading the Zephyr for the first time, I found the cartoons very distracting and annoying (no offense to the artist intended). It's not that they aren't well done cartoons, it's just that there are so many of them scattered throughout the newspaper.

Sincerely, Maize Elford-White

New Mexico