TAKE IT OR LEAVE By Jim Stiles got away from here for a while this winter and went to Australia. This is not the time nor the place to talk about that journey in much detail, except to say that it is truly a different world over there. With a land mass slightly less than the United States and a population of just 18 million (the current US. population is there simply are not enough consumers to fuel the kind of greed economy for which our country is so well known. The pace is slower...there is room to breathe. While we are doing our best to Americanize the land down under (McDonald's is everywhere and I hear they all watch Melrose Place in Sydney), the Aussies do not appear to be in any immediate danger of losing their own identity. As a friend of mine said, The Australians have a lot to learn about the free enterprise system." Back in Utah, after my time away, the culture shock was more difficult to adjust to than the jet lag. After a long flight and then a late night drive from Salt Lake, I descended into the Moab Valley, saw die twinkling lights of the town, the new sprawling hotel nearing completion, the new Taco Bell on the site of the old Meador home, and the next morning I caught my first glimpse of he new Mill Creek Pueblos. Later in the day, I drove past the remnants of the Downard Orchard. The "Beautiful Orchard Property For Sale" sign was still up, but in the field behind it lay stumps and surveyors' flagging, and all I could think was; Oh the incongruity of it all. As the week progressed and I crawled back into my Zephyr-routinit was obvious it's been a busy winter. Homes are going up everywhere, fields and pastures continue to vanish. In Salt Lake City, the legislature rejected, bills to While and urban the protect open space planning. encourage of concerns will that insists be and growth development governor vital interest to the citizens of Utah in the next decade, it was nowhere to be seen at the State Capitol. Rep. Evan Olsen, a Republican and a farmer, proposed an sales tax option earmarked for the preservation of agricultural lands. The revenue from the tax, about $36 million a year, would have been used to buy the development rights from farmers. Today, farmers often have no choice but to sell out to subdivisions and condos. Olsen, who, according to the Salt lake Tribune, generally abhors government interference in people's lives, sees no alternative. But he had no luck whatsoever in influencing his peers. And here's where the conflicting ideologies come in. I've been watching this phenomenon for years and it's just amazing to me that the contradictions aren't more obvious to them. On the one hand. Westerners resent with a passim the migration of urban refugees from large cities. The leaders of the Wise Use Movement in the West, the activists!, and their followers all, proclaim that they want to "preserve the custom and culture of the West" They have no use for silly yuppie migrants with their capucdno and foreign cars. On the other hand, they'll sell their land, and ultimately their heritage, to anybody they damn well fed like selling it to. If the price is right Of course, while they may think tire "custom and culture" of the West is herding cows and maintaining "traditional family values," the custom and culture of the West is really, and always has been, making money and let the land be damned...whatever the use. The only difference in 1997 is this: in the old days. Westerners ravaged the land of its natural resources and sent the extracted products to the people in the teeming cities. Now the people from the teeming cities want to come right to the source;, to the natural resource itself, and build a house on it So what we see here really is more of the same. The urban exodus is just another extractive industry we've finally sold the surface I Not only is there little left to be said, there is precious little land in the Moab Valley left to be agonized over, much less saved. All the private land in this valley will be developed. That's it. If you want to create an historic photographic document to show your grandchildren, drive up the Sand Flats road and start taking pictures of all the empty lots and pastures and alfalfa fields in Spanish Valley now. They simply won't be there in 30 years. And nothing short of a public outcry in Grand County and the election of the most radical dty and county councils in the history of the rural West can change that dire prediction. Public outcry? In Grand County ? 2704-million- e, d, eighth-of-a-ce- . nt ultra-conservati- Im sure you have all seen, those disfigurements of rock or tree where someone as I have, with a huge ego and a tiny mind has splashed with paint or gouged with knife to let the world know that Kilroy or ohn Doe was here. As I look around at this incredibly beautiful 6 creative work, it occurs to me that this is a new kind of writing on the walls, a kind that says proudly and beautifully. 'Man was here.' .J am proud that man is here. Lady Bird Johnson Oen Canyon Dam Dedication September 22. 1964 rights, that's alL And the Old Westerners!, not to mention Westerners like myself, had better get used to it the Middle-ag- e Now, if all this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it's because, in this publication. I've practically made a living these last few years ranting, lamenting...some would say whining, about growth and development issues in the Moab Valley. No more. At least not from this writer. I'll still report the changes, of new condos and chain motels. I'll keep shooting Then & Now shots. Maybe new Nutshell writer Haney will want to rant a bit and I'll always accept guest editorials. But, for me, I've been redundant long enough. take note S (NOTE: There is still the sentiment that we can grow in a more orderly fashion with proper planning and an eye to the future. Former County Councilman BUI Hedden takes that approach in his essay A Reluctant Remembrance, which can be found on page 8 of this issue) And the reality is, compared to what they left behind, the crime, the pollution, the congestion the urban nightmare this is paradise for most of this town's new arrivals. This is their dream, just like Moab in 1975 was my dream. How can I argue with that? They'll never know what they missed and, of course, couldn't I guess dreams change. So what is there for a guy like me to do? Well, the other day, while trapped in exactly the kind of mood I'm in right now (Frightening eh?), my buddy Hartley and I went flying with Paul Swanstrom of Mountain Flying Service. We flew out of Monticello on a morning as lovely as I have ever seen. A polished, faultless blue sky embraced us as we climbed into the early light We flew west over a snow covered Elk Ridge to Dark Canyon and saw not a trace of human activity. I could spot animal trails in the snow, but winter has a way of obliterating Signs of Man. Even jeep roads were difficult to identify in the high country. In some places!, where the drifts were several feet high, 4WD tracks vanished altogether. We banked to the southwest went right over the top of Bull Creek Pass and my favorite mountain, a place to which I'll return as soon as the snow starts to melt then made our way down the Fold to the Lake tiie Cursed Lake and finally back to the airport via the Needles country and a great lunch at the Outpost What an incredible land. There is no place on this planet that comes dose to the stunning, heartbreaking beauty of tiie Colorado Plateau. And, incredibly, as my flight last week reminded me, there is still so much land left that hasn't been spoiled and destroyed. There are still so many hidden canyons and unknown sagebrush meadows and lonely peaks and forgotten mesas that should remain hidden, unknown, lonely, and forgotten. Not marred by bulldozers, or jeep tracks, or cows, or bike tracks, or pi tons. By anything. 1 guess that's what's left for a guy like me to da At least it will keep me occupied, if not satisfied. Protecting Lost Springs? There was once a time when I welcomed all efforts by the National Park Service to acquire new land. After all, how can creating a new park or expanding its boundaries ever be anything but positive? I don't fed that way any more. When the Escalante-GranStaircase National Monument was created last frill, I was relieved to know that Clinton's proclamation had stopped future coal mining schemes on the Kaiparowits Plateau. But what about the potential for recreational impacts the new monument might create? I've seen it time after time. Throw a spotlight on a heretofore unvisited unknown little gem of land and every hikerbikerdimber, Lev recreationist wants to see it. And, as I've said a hundred times before, enough people can ruin damn near anything. And now I hear that Arches National Park wants to extend its boundary to indude a small complex of red rock called Lost Spring Canyon. The legislation required to annex the land is bring drafted by none other than Chris Cannon, Utah's latest Republican congressman. Rep. Cannon is not exactly he hates the new monument is not too thrilled with environmentalists. But he's all for this expansion. So how will Lost Spring Canyon's new status protect it? I haven't got a due. Right now, hardly anybody ever goes into that area. Recreational impacts are practically Cows have an impact on the canyon, but under the toms of the proposed legislation, the rancher and his son who graze cattle in there right now will be able to remain for their lifetimes another 40 years? They can sell their grazing privileges to someone like the Grand Canyon Trust if they choose to, but they don't have ta Walt Dtabney, superintendent of parks in southeast Utah, is delighted. He told the Salt Lake Tribune, "(Lost Springs) has the potential for becoming a major part of the backcountry experience;" d ed pro-par- k, non-existe- nt