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Chalk it up to bolt dolts

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Mike Ryan’s defense of rock climbing (HCN, 7/7/03: Invasion of the rock jocks) — that “climbers aren’t just dirtbags ... it’s mainstream now” and that they now are “doctors and lawyers” (and such, I must add) who by God “drive SUVs and have credit cards” is telling: telling us it’s an elitist avaricious capitalism that principally drives the wreckreational industries, just like it drives the nation these days. To speak in generalities (for, as T. S. Eliot noted, “the particular has no language,” and I have some doctor-lawyer-etc. friends, though of the lower-brow sort), it’s these same rich bastards and their offal-spring who attempt to appease their guilt by donating to the Sahara Club while being lost in the vast expanses of their trophy homes, SUVs, swimming pools and golf courses.

So give me and my outstretched fly-fishing arms your dirtbags, your rednecks, your poor slobs any day. They’re one hell of a lot more interesting and no doubt doing far less environmental damage per capita, if not in toto.

In the spirit of Wobbly old Ed Abbey,
David Cremean
Spearfish, South Dakota
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