Trifter

Recently I took a trip to see the Drumheller Hoodoos and Canadian Rocky Mountains. My wife grew up in Alberta and had often visited these areas as a child, she remembered fondly admiring the unusual natural landscapes. For the most part the trip was enjoyable, but one thing was evident. People were out to destroy the natural beauty of the area. Much of what we saw was unusual, but far from natural. People, in their need for 15 minutes of fame, or longer, have insisted on destroying things that took nature hundreds, thousands, or millions, of years to create.

Brett, Sam, Ian, Awdal, all took it as their own personal responsibility to leave their mark on the environment. They all decided that their name was more important than anything “God” or “Mother Nature” had to offer.

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Good for them, after all it is not like I drove out of my way for 6 hours to see something spectacular. Sure I could have seen their names at home, but why bother, it is so much better to see their names on natural occurring surfaces like sandstone, even more so than seeing their names, tags, on buildings in the city, or train cars.

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Sandstone is a substance that takes forever to form, and gradually erodes with the help of wind and rain, and people carving their names, and possibly even dirty pictures, into its’ soft surface. In the Alberta Badlands, near the city of Drumheller, there is a formation known as “The Hoodoos”, these are really neat, natural features. Standing for hundreds of years, protected from erosion because of their “caps” the Hoodoos are being sacrificed to the Gods by people like Brett, Ian, and Sam.

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I guess they figured that when I want to take photographs of natural things, that I would want to include their names in my snap shot too. How wonderfully considerate of them. If I had known they were doing this I would have planned my trip at a different time of day, possibly to capture the light bouncing off their names from a different angle.
Are people so isolated and alone in a world of over 6 and a half million people, that they need to gain fame by carving their name into an ancient formation? Oh please let us hope Brett is not on a trip to Egypt to see the pyramids next. Let us pray Ian is not off to Machu Picchu, and forgive us if Sam is headed to Easter Island.

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But wait, let us not forget about other creative people like Awdal, who left his, or her, name on a rock in the Rocky Mountains. Along side of a bunch of other people, he, or she, defaced an entire lake by blotting out the foreground with their name on a rock. The taggers nearby are not much more important, only thing is, you cannot even read them. Defacing nature in this way clearly has one common outcome,it means every other person feels they have to do the same thing, or that they have the right to do the same thing. If people hate nature so much, why are they on vacation in a natural setting? Why didn’t they just stay in the inner city?

Will Brett, Sam, Awdal, and Ian have fond memories of these natural spots and desire to bring their children to the same places? Will the places have anything natural left if they do? Is a name any more meaning full if it is carved into an ancient rock formation or painted on a boulder? Is a name any less important if it is written on paper? Is Brett going to know what an impact he made on our holiday?