The random viciousness of some people never ceases to astound me. Take this story.
Pinnacle Park reopened Tuesday after being closed since the weekend for public safety. Nails were found hammered into tree roots along 2 miles of park trails.
The 1,100-acre forested park is owned by the town of Sylva, with a total of 18.5 miles of trails popular with hikers and trail runners. More than 60 spikes were found along a 2-mile section of trail, said town manager Paige Roberson Dowling.
One person was injured and another landed on a spike that pierced his shoe.
Sylva police and other city staff and volunteers spent three days blowing leaves off the trails and followed with metal detectors to locate the spikes.
“It was a deliberate effort. Someone hammered 4-inch long galvanized nails and left them sticking out a half- to 1 inch, and at an angle so they’re like spikes,” said Brian Barwatt, race director of the Assault on Black Rock, a 7-mile trail race March 18 in Pinnacle Park.
Of course, this crime is not as bad as murder and rape and a whole host of other vicious acts. But there is something about a person putting such a great deal of thought and going to a great deal of effort to ruin other people’s enjoyment of a harmless pastime that speaks to a really sick mind. The motivation to do such a thing truly baffles me.
It is for a good reason that the location of Methuselah, at 5,000 years thought to be the oldest non-clonal tree in the world, is kept secret by the Forest Service. The same kinds of people who think it is great fun to topple ancient rock formations or write their names on iconic places in national parks, might feel that it was somehow clever to carve their names into such a tree or do even worse, such as hack a piece off as a souvenir.
But as a result, none of us can see this record-breaking tree,
More ghastly details of US torture practices revealed
I seem to recall that environmentalists would do similar things to hurt loggers and their equipment. Could be the same kind of thing, too many runners damaging the park?
It did not work for Prometheus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(tree)
Many years ago when living in Portland, OR I had a plot in a community garden. Each person rented from the city, for nominal fee, a plot we could use to grow “any legal crop”. For people without gardens where they live, mostly low income apartment dwellers, it was a chance to have home grown vegetables, herbs, flowers. One year we had problems with vandalism. Someone(s) at night entered the garden through the unlocked gate, pulled plants out of the ground and tore them, broke tools, trampled small sheds and trestles people had built, smashed ripening squash and cucumbers. I could see someone stealing food if they were hungry, but wondered then what kind of person thinks they are a fucking hero because they beat up a plant? As you said, not murder or rape but what kind of mindset drives someone to put that much effort into destroying someone’s harmless pleasures? And it could not have been misdirected anger against one person because we were all vandalized.
I wonder if Trump ever beat up a plant?
tecolata:
I wonder if Trump ever beat up a plant?
It would outsmart him. But the secret service goons would beat the plant up for him.
none of us can see this record-breaking tree.
Well, you can see it, you just don’t know it when you’re looking at it. Nevertheless, I still recommend a visit to the bristlecone grove in the White Mountains. Methuselah is only marginally older than many other individual trees in the grove. It’s a really serene, sort of powerfully inhuman kind of place. When I was there I was struck by two things: the sheer profusion of cones in the gullies and all over the ground, such reproductive excess for this slow-growing species; and seeing the saplings give you this weird inverted perspective. You’re looking at 4-5,000 year-old trees, as far as the eye can see, most looking mostly dead, and then you see a ~20 year-old sapling that could still be alive in the 71st century, long after everything now extant in the human-built world will have become dust.
Those won’t hurt the trees (iron nails can actually help trees health), they’re placed to hurt people.
Those are, effectively, punji sticks placed in roots to hurt people who might step on them, and mostly likely placed by someone who believes they are protecting the trees.
Similar man traps were found in bush parks around my home town, recently opened up to mountain bikers. There are plenty of strange people who think they should have exclusive possession of public lands, sometimes for growing their favourite cash crops.
keithb @1:
The intent was not to harm loggers. There was only one reported incident resulting in harm which may have involved enviro tree spiking, and that led to activists either stopping the practice, or putting up signs. More here.
Not as bad as murder and rape? I don’t think I agree. Penetrating someone’s body without permission? Sounds a lot like rape to me. What it doesn’t have in the emotional/sexual component, it makes up for physically by penetrating a part of your body that is not ever supposed to be penetrated. Not to mention there is a big emotional part to sudden unexpected evil in a place of calm and beauty.
So personally, I put this in the same category as rape.
@keithb No. 1
Environmentalists drove spikes deep into trees to prevent them from being cut down—a chain saw striking metal would fly a part—and, yes, injure loggers nearby. Here’s the difference though. Trees that had been spiked were clearly marked so as to warn loggers away.
This actually sounds more like someone pissed off at bikers ruining the peace and tranquility of their walking space.
Jeff Hess
Have Coffee Will Write
Likewise the Wollemi Pine, which is extinct except for a single grove in an undisclosed location.
#8
So all stabbing is now rape? No, they are different acts and hence treated differently.
@#8: Wut. No.
Anyway. Personally, living in and knowing the area, I think it’s someone either trying to stop the trail race that’s planned for March, or someone pissed about the amorphous ‘other’ using what they consider to be their park. There’s a seriously strong element of No Outsiders amongst some of the less, um, personable long term residents, and the area’s ‘outsider’ population is expanding quickly.
Last I saw about it on the news, the mayor of Sylva proposed that it could be a park neighbor who opposed use, or who opposed expansion, of the trail system. He seemed as flummoxed as anyone.
A friend of mine got a nasty puncture wound while hiking (it wasn’t a deliberate act as in the posted story). After infection, amputation, rehab, further infection and complications he died last year. I do a lot of trail running, and if I ever saw someone doing this they’d get a full can of pepper spray, and they’d be lucky that’s all I carry.