Rocks In Their Heads Again: Another Bunch Of Idiots Knock Over An Ancient Stone Formation, This Time In Oregon
“Every now and again people do something so monumentally destructive, dimwitted and dishonorable it belongs in a class of disgracefulness normally reserved for trophy hunters ... It’s almost as if they wake up one morning and say to themselves, ‘Hmm … What can we do today that will make our families and friends forever ashamed they know us, and everybody else start conversations with, ‘Hey, did you hear about the jerks …’”
That’s how I started a Great Outdoors dispatch nearly three years ago, titled “Rocks in Their Heads: What Were the Scout Leaders Who Vandalized Utah’s Goblin Valley State Park Thinking.”
Glenn Taylor and Dave Hall, the now former Boy Scout leaders, compounded their stupidity in 2013 by posting a video of their deed online, and then claiming they toppled the 170 million-year-old rock formation because they feared it would fall over and hurt somebody.
The group of trolls who knocked over an ancient sandstone pedestal on the Oregon coast last week reportedly made a similarly asinine claim to two guys who captured their deed using a video camera mounted on a drone. When the pair confronted the vandals they were told that the 7-foot-tall pedestal was a menace because a friend had broken his leg there.
If you haven’t seen the video, here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6jVHiGOmBc
Now the popular, often-photographed formation at Oregon’s Cape Kiwanda, which had been shaped like a duck’s bill, is a pile of rubble, just like the Utah rock.
By chance, I had passed within a few miles of both sites shortly before their destruction. In 2013 my wife, son and a friend hiked through Utah’s Fantasy Canyon and marveled at numerous delicately balanced rocks, and it occurred to me then how easy it would have been for some jerks to knock them over. A few weeks later, my foreboding proved accurate.
Then, earlier this summer my son and I spent several days camping and kayaking along the Oregon coast just south of Cape Kiwanda, and the delicate sandstone sculptures created there by waves and wind reminded me of the Utah rock formations. They also brought back memories of the Scout leaders’ atrocity, and I recall thinking, “I hope the same thing doesn’t happen here.”
The Utah jerks were quickly caught, but as of this writing the Oregon vandals are still at large.
Authorities hope somebody will make identifications from video and turn them in.
If and when that happens I think a judge should order them to recreate the sculpture by hand. It likely took nature eons to carve the fragile sandstone so elegantly and delicately, so the miscreants would have plenty of time to reflect on their actions.
Sadly, such desecration is as old as the hills.
Those of us who spend time in the great outdoors have grown accustomed to seeing initials carved or spray-painted on rocks, garbage tossed along the trail, cigarette butts and beer cans on beaches, tire ruts cut through meadows …
I have mixed feelings about drones and hidden cameras catching perpetrators. On the one hand I’m a law-and-order hardliner when it comes to vandalism and therefore welcome capturing criminals by any means; on the other I lament extending Orwell’s dystopia to the wilderness.
I realize most people who venture outside cherish and preserve nature, but it only takes a handful to wreck it. Let’s hope the blockheads are caught soon.
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