Scofflaw
And now for today's edition of naked hypocrisy.
So I did something I'm not going to recommend. It's been almost seven years since I've been to the top of the Mount Baldy sand dune (This is the last picture in my catalogue taken from atop the dune), and I've wanted to go for a while. But I can never successfully time the ranger-guided hikes to go up there, and you have to do those with, like, forty other people. But as it turned out, there wasn't anybody around on this particular day, so I went. I ducked past the signs and over the chain blocking the trail and made a fast run along the little path I haven't walked in years up onto the edge of the dune.
Now, I want to emphasize that this is not an act I encourage or condone in others, and I do feel remorse over having ignored the regulations of the National Park Service. I do think they've closed this dune for good reasons, both in the interest of safety and to preserve the fragile dune environment. A century of feet trampling all over the place is what started this dune moving in the first place, and I've already contributed to that on more than one occasion in the past. But here's what I figured. The National Park Service does guided hikes up here with forty-someodd people at a time, which means there's got to be semi-safe places for forty-someodd people to stand. I figured that if I walked up to the section I used to think of as the entry foyer, on the forest side of the little trees that once marked the edge of the windward dune face and just stayed on top where I saw footprints, I'd be okay in terms of safety. All I had to worry about was an unfortunately timed passage of a ranger down on the trail, but I figured I was mostly okay. The worst that would happen would be that they'd give me a ticket. And so that's what I did, and here's the picture to prove it in a court of law.
Scofflaw
And now for today's edition of naked hypocrisy.
So I did something I'm not going to recommend. It's been almost seven years since I've been to the top of the Mount Baldy sand dune (This is the last picture in my catalogue taken from atop the dune), and I've wanted to go for a while. But I can never successfully time the ranger-guided hikes to go up there, and you have to do those with, like, forty other people. But as it turned out, there wasn't anybody around on this particular day, so I went. I ducked past the signs and over the chain blocking the trail and made a fast run along the little path I haven't walked in years up onto the edge of the dune.
Now, I want to emphasize that this is not an act I encourage or condone in others, and I do feel remorse over having ignored the regulations of the National Park Service. I do think they've closed this dune for good reasons, both in the interest of safety and to preserve the fragile dune environment. A century of feet trampling all over the place is what started this dune moving in the first place, and I've already contributed to that on more than one occasion in the past. But here's what I figured. The National Park Service does guided hikes up here with forty-someodd people at a time, which means there's got to be semi-safe places for forty-someodd people to stand. I figured that if I walked up to the section I used to think of as the entry foyer, on the forest side of the little trees that once marked the edge of the windward dune face and just stayed on top where I saw footprints, I'd be okay in terms of safety. All I had to worry about was an unfortunately timed passage of a ranger down on the trail, but I figured I was mostly okay. The worst that would happen would be that they'd give me a ticket. And so that's what I did, and here's the picture to prove it in a court of law.