Re: [RC] Setting Fire to Tents a/k/a Cut-throat Competition - Barbara McCrary
In our part of the country, and in a state
park, it is environmentalists who can't stand to see their pure wilderness
besmirched by bright-colored flagging.
Subject: Re: [RC] Setting Fire to Tents
a/k/a Cut-throat Competition
I expect it was hunters and I expect it had become a game. We
got through the ride except for one turn that way the hell back in the woods
they managed to get to. Most people figured it out but of course a few didn't.
Vandalizing of ribbons is fairly common and has been going on for a LONG
time. On my first endurance ride, in 1971, someone not only removed ribbons
>from the correct trail, but re-hung them on trees going up a mountain.
After I had gone some distance (and following the tracks of other riders who
had been fooled), the ribbons stopped and I was hopelessly confused. It was
in an area that just led me around in circles. Finally, the drag riders
came along and helped me get straightened out.
I was flagging a trail for one of my rides one day, and when finished
was riding back along part of the trail I'd just flagged on my way
back to the trailer. I came to a fork in the trail and the ribbons
had already been moved, to the wrong fork! Then I came upon a couple
of guys in a pickup truck, and there were some of my ribbons in the
bed.
I said to them, "Say, if you see anyone pulling down ribbons from the
trees along here, could you ask them not to do that? I'm marking the
trail for a trail ride here next weekend ... I'll take them down after
the ride."
They then admitted they'd been pulling ribbons down, and re-marked the
fork, because they thought they were ribbons put up by rival hunters
leading to a hunting spot!
At the Race of Champions one year, a resident near the trail kept
pulling down ribbons. When ride management talked to her about it,
she indignantly told them that she paid a lot of money to live out
there and wasn't going to tolerate ribbons spoiling the view. Ride
management had to send someone out just ahead of the riders to re-mark
the trail.
--
We imitate our
masters only because we are not yet masters ourselves, and only
because in doing so
we learn the truth about what cannot be imitated.
