| OCR Text |
Show pick. Lin Ottinger is justly, or unjustly, seen by new order land management as a rogue plunderer of nature and antiquity, pillaging the public trust. aWe'd take Lin's permits away right now if he were not Lin Ottinger. He was here before we were. it for Lin says, 'When the park service came here they put in their declaration-re- ad yourself if you don't believe me-t-hat park lands are for the Inspiration, benefit and use of the public. They promised that they would not close existing roads into the park then proceeded to seal off almost every one. They closed the most beautiful road out there, too, the one that went to the Bolts from the base of the Shafer Trail. It was AWESOME. In 1979 Lin was so infuriated by this betrayal that he traveled to Washington, staked out the Department of Interior, stalked Interior Secretary William Wayland, bribed clerks with turquoise jewelry, and ranted at secretaries on every floor. One by one, the roads were closed anyway. Lin's legendary night time Moab Rock Shop slide shows, now sadly a thing of the past, would often dramatize and satirize run-in- s with the Park Sendee, turning nature of high stand-u- p moments comedy and photography and geology workshops into performance art that brightened many a tourist's overheated Moab vacation. Lin's bad blood with big government still flows freely, but it has sometimes gotten more difficult for him to balance his anger with his humor of old. He will not allow old wounds to heal A dinosaur of a man, he picks at the scabs of past injustices. 1 was picking up chert to put in my driveway. I've been doing this for forty years. One day I was picking up chert on a piece of land north of Klondike Bluffs, outside of Arches National Park. I didn't know it at the time, but rangers were tailing me, taking spying on me like secret agents with guns photographs, tracking me with walkie-talkie'and radios, behind rocks and on top of cliffs. They arrested me for stealing government property and I had to hire a lawyer to in I but it prove in court that I was not taking chert from National Park land. won court, DOLLARS! cost me TEN THOUSAND Til never forgive them and Til never talk to those stupid jerks until they pay me back someone who read a couple my ten thousand dollars. They go to college and get taught by think and of geology books. They memorize all the terms they know it all They get hired dunes and that we by the Park Service to tell the tourists that the slickrock is petrified sand have to worry about erosion. How do they think this place gpt to look like this? The to learn something, their rangers stay here for three years and, just as they are about contract is up and they leave, then some other jack ass replaces them. If s a stupid system. "They hate me and they are going to hate me a lot more Lin is an equal opportunity grudge hound. He gets irritated with anyone who crosses him at the wrong time, unless they are pretty, then he kisses up like any pure blooded male dinosaur. The older he gets the more people annoy him. The longer he lives the more him. I expect him people he meets and the more people he meets, the more people annoy to go nuclear any time now. s, -- Don't touch that. You don't know where it has keen." I don't think Lin's mother ever said that to him. As a result, he never lost his and trust in insects, snakes, lizards, or any other living thing, except maybe US ce HUMANS. My grandmother had a house with a porch and a swing. Hornets built a very large nest on one side of the porch. Grandma just let them be. We got used to the hornets and they got used to us. We'd play on the porch and swing in the swing and the hornets never bothered us. One day Grandma came home from a trip and found all her furniture in the yard. It turned out two men had been robbing her house when the hornets attacked them. They almost died from the stings. "One day a big bumble bee flew into my shop. It flew around and around, and I caught it in my hand, right here next to the cash register. I carried it outside let it go. The next day the same bee came in, at the same time of day. I stood in the same spot, held my hand out, and it flew onto my hand. For weeks that same bee would come in and buzz my tourists, who would go crazy and scream. I'd say, 'Look at that poor bee. It must be lost. I'll bet it will land on my hand. I'll bet you twenty dollars that it will land on my hand.' A couple of months agp someone gave Lin a large scorpion. He paraded the scorpion around on his hand and clothing for the tourists, talking to it like a dog letting children handle it as their parents' cringed, cowered, and turned away. He put it in a small fish tank on his desk and spent half a day looking around the shop for spiders and crickets to feed it The next morning Lin left the shop to guide a tour. The scorpion looked dead. It lay loose and crumpled in the comer of the tank with a spider standing on its head. I shook the tank. Nothing. Every now and then I looked in on the scorpion. It hadn't moved. At 5:30 Lin returned from his tour. Before I could break the news to him that the scorpion was dead, he walked in the door and said, 'Daddy's home. The scorpion hopped up on all eights and ran around the tank in circles. Lin walked up to the tank and stood over it. The scorpion tried to crawl up the side. Lin put his hand into the tank. The scorpion crawled up his arm onto his shoulder. That-a-boy- ." were there, you wouldn't stand in front of the woman. She'd be laying on the bottom. You just ain't tough enough. You ain't tough at all Lin was talking about the partially fossilized human femur in a glass case in his shop, all that remains of two green human skeletons he found in a deposit of azurite in a copper mine just south of Moab. The bones are a million years old and they are white people. These skeletons prove that white people originated on this continent This woman anthropologist that works for the BLM asked me, Tf they were white people, where'd they go?' I told her they got on their horses and rode to Europe across the land bridge. She said, T certainly hope you are wrong.' I asked her why she hoped I was wrong and she said, Decause my career depends on it.' 1 said, 'YOUR CAREER?! WHY, YOUR CAREER AINT WORTH NOTHING! I'll tell truth that's important, not your you about your stupid career. Your career is . . if s the goddamn career. I almost had her crying, he says with a proud gaptoothed grin. Lin gave the bones to a university. The university gave them to students, who began to destroy them while practicing dating procedures. There is no way you They were carbon dating bones found next to a uranium deposit can date something thafs been absorbing that kind of radioactivity for a million years . Lin stormed the university, took what was left of the bones back to his rock shop, and them to prove . . . God knows whatever. recently pve them to creationists who are using I asked him, 'Why did you give them to the creationists, of all people? Because they wanted them. You just ain't tough enough. Un said with a snarl Texs Rjverways Express Salt Lake Canyonlands mm or (801) 587-306- The shuttle stops at the above locations by reservation only SUBSCRIBE TO THE ZEPHYR $15 A YEAR (details on page 3) readership has had to endure one touchy-feel- y poem after another. Thrust upon you brothers. Now It's by my two my turn: RIVER VISIONS, INC. P.O. Box 67 Moab, UT 84532 3-- D well-meani- ng Factory windows are always broken. Something or other Is going wrong. SometNng Is rotten...l think In Denmark. End of factory window song. a word from Darren Vaughan, the brains behind this operation. What does this poem have to do with CANOE OUTFITTING 691 SHUTTLE SEBVICE North 500 West (801) running rivers? Nothing. ...Refreshing Isn't it?" JETBOAT TOURS 259-510- 1 THIRTEEN 1 SHUTTLE SERVICE 'For the last several months, the Zephyr vrrrrfTrrrrrf ...and now Bighorn "If you |
