A young ponderosa tree cut by a hiker who didn’t like the branches brushing against him. Courtesy/Lisa Lindberg
By LISA LINDBERG
Los Alamos
I was born and raised here and despite some years spent in Las Cruces and a couple in MA, I have lived in Los Alamos nearly all my 61 years. This is my home. Most of my childhood was spent scrambling over canyon rocks, hiking the trails, camping at Camp May and other campsites nearby and playing out in the beautiful surroundings of Los Alamos.
Never once did I consider carving my initials into a rock or into a tree. I was taught to respect nature—the rocks, the wildflowers the Ponderosas, pinon, aspen, and juniper, the bushes and cacti, the canyon walls. It never occurred to me that I had a right to rearrange, move, dig up, carve, or prune any of the natural landscape around me. Because it does not belong to me … it belongs to us all.
You can imagine my dismay last Friday when my husband returned home from a hike in the canyon behind our house (the canyon between Horse Mesa and Tsukimi Village). He was distraught. On his way out he had run into a young man with a dog and pruning shears. The young man declared he was trimming some plants that were bushing against him while hiking. Innocently, my husband thought he was just trimming back some scrub oak. Upon his return, he discovered that the young man had mutilated two young 6-7 ft. high) Ponderosa pines. On one he chopped off all the trail-facing limbs. All of them. On the second tree, he trimmed branches and then tried to lop off the top. They will die.
A month or so ago another man (perhaps the same one for all I know) was stopped from jack hammering out a path in the canyon’s wall so he could ride his dirt bike down to the bottom of the canyon.
This kind of behavior must be stopped. The canyons, trees, bushes, wildflowers and wildlife are not yours to adjust to your liking. Leave nature alone. Step around what’s in your way. Leave yucca, cacti, bushes, and trees alone. And if you can’t handle plant life brushing up against you, you do not belong on the trails.
The Forest Service and the county will take care of fallen trees or rocks that block trails. It is not your job to do so.
Another young ponderosa cut by a hiker who didn’t like the branches brushing against him. Courtesy/Lisa Lindberg
