We greet each other cautiously. On our side we are two middle
aged couples, well into our forties, out for a walk in the desert. He is a young
man, half our age, with a big gun and a big bike and a puffed out chest, and he
is a little nervous. Though I’ve been in it a hundred times I ask him about the
slot canyon, and he assures us that it is beautiful and well worth exploring. He
doesn’t look at us when he speaks, staring down towards our feet and focused in
the middle distance somewhere. I ask him casually why is he carrying the gun. He
looks up at me and smiles smuggly and says, “ it’s a visual deterrent “. He is
five miles illegally inside of an area of critical environmental concern that is
closed to vehicular travel and he knows it, and he knows that we know it. This
place is for hikers and horseback, and specifically not for lime green dirt
bikes.
There is a beat of awkward silence here; This is the place to have the
needed discussion or for an escalation to happen, but a calculation cannot be be
made. He is clearly armed and we are clearly not, and it’s a fine day not to get
shot, we silently decide. He walks around us and gets on his mount, we wish each
other a good day, his bikes roars to life, and in seconds he is gone, leaving a
scar that will take years for the elements to erase.
Thus it is, the seemingly
unavoidable conflict between those who walk into the landscape and those who
ride over it. The hikers versus the motorheads. Granola versus the goobers.
There seems to be no workable answer. As for us, it was indeed a fine day, we
had a great visit into this mysterious hidden place, and then followed the
motorcycle tracks out.
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