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Re-Creation

By David Feela

" Indeed my steadiest employment, if such it can be called, is to keep myself at the top of my condition, and ready for whatever may turn up in heaven or on earth. - Henry Thoreau "

Every year, my wife, Pam, and I travel to Death Valley for five luxurious days in the toasty pre-heated summer warmth, weather that will eventually migrate to the Southwest. Like me, many tourists gawk at the vast desolate landscape, but the birds don't seem to care. The mourning doves, turkey vultures and rock wrens, they're at home in the emptiness, undisturbed by one of nature's greatest depressions, and the snatches of birdsong they leave in their wake remind me how differently humans build their nests.

On the way home, for a sense of contrast, we always stop for a night or two in Las Vegas. The city also hosts a few birds, but mostly cranes, the ones that don't migrate, except when they're hauled across town on an oversized trailer to a different demolition site, where another high-rise casino and hotel complex is scheduled to begin construction.

Normally, these cranes can be seen atop half-finished skyscrapers, swinging slowly side to side, lifting building supplies and equipment off the ground into their airy perches. They are made of steel and hydraulics, not the usual feathers and bones - hardly candidates for an endangered species list.

What's endangered in Las Vegas might be a sense of history, especially on the Strip. Things change so rapidly in this world of diversified corporate pockets and high stakes tourist dollars that a multi-billion-dollar grand opening one year might be demolished before the decade is out. Just prior to our arrival, the Stardust actually bit the dust. The Cosmopolitan was breaking ground, and Aladdin was getting a facial, with a new marquee, Planet Hollywood, fixed to its brow. This frenzy of building up and tearing down is standard practice in a culture where economic strategists are convinced the tourists are too easily bored.

Apparently, it's not enough to have a scaled-back Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Egyptian pyramid, Arthurian castle, Italian villa, Venetian Piazza, Monte Carlo and a Roman palace, all within walking distance. Visitors to Las Vegas supposedly want more; why not please them? And why not give the rest of us who live in the marginal West exactly what we want too?

Gutzon Borglum carved up the Black Hills of South Dakota to create Mount Rushmore, a tourist attraction Las Vegas developers have yet to reproduce on the Strip. What if we took our Sleeping Ute and with some serious earth-moving equipment transformed it into a spewing volcano, smoke and rocks flying in four directions, open to the public seven days a week? Or we could carve an actual lizard head out of the promontory already designated by that name. Maybe include a water slide. Imagine the hackles we could raise with a larger-than-life canine maw at the entrance to both sides of the newest tunnel near the top of Wolf Creek Pass. You see, if the rest of us got into a Las Vegas state of mind, unlimited unrealized economic opportunities are ready for some big-time exploitation.

Watching the hydraulic cranes through my binoculars from my hotel room got me started on this concept, rethinking our laid-back sense of tourism. I mean, Death Valley is nice, in a Deathy sort of way, but money springs eternal on the Strip. I mean, would the natural world just remain wilderness without us, without constantly transforming it to serve our ends? It sounds unnatural.

Maybe I don't know what I mean. Since the beginning of time the earth hasn't remained static, but ultimately it's a frenetic rate of change we have introduced to the planet. Las Vegas is a perfect example of this restructuring frenzy. And even more frustrating than the rate of change is the mentality behind most of it: That it's inevitable, good for us, a sign of intelligence, progress and economic muscle. In Death Valley, the bottom line is 282 feet below sea level; in American business, the bottom line somehow stretches toward the moon.

In the beginning was the Word and six days later, the universe. It's possible the people in Las Vegas are believers after all.