Seven years ago when our younger son was seven we took a trip to Israel.
It was his first time and along with the beaches and the parks and the cities we planned to take him to several archaeological digs.
The first we picked was Qumran the place where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. He had already seen the scrolls themselves they are kept in a climate controlled museum in Jerusalem. He was fascinated by them and we thought that visiting the actual place would be a treat.
“It’s a hole in the ground,” he said when we got there.
“It’s 2,000 year old,” we answered.
“It’s a 2,000 year old hole in the ground,” he responded.
We looked around and grudgingly had to admit he was right.
Despite the fact that the writings that shook the foundations of western civilization were found there what is left at Qumran are only a bunch of holes albeit very old holes in the ground and a nice little kiosk that sells overpriced soft drinks and snacks.
One of the reasons why the scrolls were preserved is simply because Qumran was and is a pretty worthless piece of real estate. Nothing grows there, there is no source of water and animals try to pass through as quickly as possibly.
If it was just a little bit hospitable like Jerusalem or Jaffa or Tiberius Qumran would have been built on, destroyed, built on, destroyed and built on again. But because it had no history after it was destroyed the scrolls were saved for us to find.
Yet despite its claim to fame it is a hole in the ground and not a very nice hole in the ground.
While something monumental occurred at Qumran 2,000 years ago nothing ever much happened EVER in the history of human civilization on the proposed potash works 10 miles north of Wendover.
It was part of the trail taken by a thankfully very small minority of incredibly stupid pioneers who later ended up getting stuck in the mountains 400 miles west and ended up eating each other.
There is a very pretty park at the site of the cannibalism as well as parks all through the West commemorating the great migration of their much smarter contemporaries who actually made it to wherever they were going without cooking each other over a campfire.
What we got on that bit of wasteland north of Wendover are wagon ruts. 170 year old wagon ruts that are still there because no one else was stupid enough to take that short cut.
According to the Oregon and California Trails Association those wagon ruts left by the cannibalistic morons are holy and should be left untouched in perpetuity for future generations to admire.
First of all we doubt very much that anyone between the ages of 6 to 106 will ever look at one of the wagon ruts with a sense of awe or wonder.
The view perhaps but the ruts? We saw them, not very impressed.
Even if the proposed potash mine were to wipe out every single wagon rut on the property where would be the harm?
It is not like they would be tearing up and remodeling Salt Lake City which has been torn up and remodeled about a hundred times since it was established.
Yet the BLM has ordered a 10 mile exclusion zone around the holy ruts.
The no build zone around Quram is about five mile and that is mostly to prevent another kiosk from competing for tourist shekels.
Not every thing old should be persevered heck not every thing young should be preserved.
The obsessive compulsion to rope off everything with the goal of “preserving” history is a mental illness and only proves that some of those moronic pioneers have descendants.