Some Random Thoughts about Rocks and the Flag.....

Here in Utah over the past few days we have had quite a flurry of news stories about the Boy Scout Leaders who destroyed the rock formation in Goblin Valley State Park.  They have issued excuses saying that they did it because this particular formation was unstable and dangerous.  I am not going to play the video, it has been shown on news stations throughout the World.  Should you decide to watch the video, I would suggest watching the reaction as the top of the formation tumbles to the ground. 

I probably should have stated that I am a native Utahn, I have lived in Utah for all but about 3 ½ years of the 40+ years that I have been allowed to walk this Earth.  I also want to point out that I have spent a good portion of those years in the Southern Utah area.  I am not sure that it is possible for anyone to love a region in this beautiful country more than I love Southern Utah.  My ancestors were early settlers in the area, the ground is what I would describe as being sacred to me.

If you were able to travel in a straight line from the East Gate of the Goblin Valley State Park in a southwestern direction approximately 40 miles, you would come to the junction of Utah State Highways 12 and 24, at what was once the Eastern edge of the small town of Torrey, Utah.  (the town’s boundaries have been expanded) To show why I love that area, a couple of hundred yards south and just east from that junction, there is a cemetery.  In that beautiful little cemetery there are interred a set of my great grandparents, a set of my grandparents, my parents, 3 uncles 2 aunts and 2 first cousins along with several other more distant relatives.  To say that it is near and dear to my heart is an understatement.

Scenic Southern Utah

I put in the last two paragraphs as a background for the sentiment that I feel.  I do not consider myself an environmentalist, nor do I ever wish to be associated with them.  What I am is someone who can’t stand vandalism in any form.  I just don’t see any excuse for it.  Why should anyone feel the need to deface, mar or destroy anything, especially something that doesn’t belong directly to them?  It isn’t cool, right nor justifiable!  To me there really is nothing anyone can say, nor any cause so worthy to make me accept vandalism as a good thing. 

These Boy Scout leaders have claimed that their actions were justifiable.  I struggle to accept that.  Here in the United States, we are encouraged to retire our flag when it becomes worn out and tattered.  I have had to do that on just one occasion in my life. It is something that I would liken that experience to what these leaders claimed they did. 

I recall almost perfectly the afternoon when I was asked to retire the flag which flew at my then place of employment.  I went and purchased a new flag to replace the one which I was retiring, took the old flag from the pole, laid it on a counter, and ran the new flag up the flagpole.  I took the old flag, put in in a metal can doused it with lighter fluid, and struck the match.  In the instant that it took for me to light the match and drop in onto the old flag, my mind was filled of memories.  I remembered as a child watching Walter Cronkite giving reports on the War in Viet Nam, I remembers the stories of an uncle who managed to survive Omaha Beach relatively unscathed only to be severely wounded at the Battle of The Bulge. (he is one of my 3 uncles buried in that cemetery in Torrey.)  I thought of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, Grenada, I remembered friends and friends of friends who had fought in the first Gulf War. (This was prior to September 11, 2001.)

I remembered being astonished at how quickly thoughts could rush through my head, I had only hesitated a few moments with the match.  The match hadn’t burned down to my fingers nor had it gone out.  I dropped the match as it fell a lump rose in my throat and my eyes welled with tears of pride, not in myself, but in those who had sacrificed everything for me.  I felt a peace and a reverence that I had never before felt at any place where I had worked. I was free, not because of anything I had done, but because so many selfless souls had given that to me!

I ask you to forgive me, if I say that I am skeptical when those Boy Scout leaders say that they used bad actions for a good reason.  Their reaction doesn’t say that to me, I know, they may not hold that ground as sacred as I do.  I also know that it really isn’t my place to judge, at the same time, I don’t believe it was their place to do what they did.