Oh a beautiful day! Not a soul in sight. A cold Winter wind keeping most away. What a nice image, a tunnel from long ago enhanced with a new beautiful wooden structure for those so erstwhile bicyclists that have a sanctity in the Pacific NW.

Upon a closer look, a sigh. Must certain people deface everything, especially in nature?

Some view tagging and such defacing as ‘art’. I have seen very few instances of the mural like adornments that qualify as ‘art’. Mostly it is gang markings of territory or ‘I was here’ tags for posterity. On fences, buildings, street signs, sidewalks, walls, garage doors, seemingly everywhere…they piss me off. They assault my sense of livability and I frankly could give a shit about the social angst that supposedly justifies their expressions of self. 

Oh my. I enter the tunnel to find through its entire length, hundreds of passersby have etched their names, initials, comments upon/into the interior walls of the tunnel. At least some used chalk!

WTF! I suspect that the overwhelming majority of visitors to this area are to some varying degree lovers of nature having ventured up the Gorge for more than a place to find privacy to do certain things. No, most are probably revelers in nature. So this man made structure supporting up a long ago man made tunnel carved through the rock a hundred years ago apparently is a ready canvas for self expressions? Group think vandalism? 

Did cave dwellers and transient clans come upon the etchings on rocks eons ago and utter their versions of profanity at the site of ‘I was here’ markings? I don’t know. Right now there are no mitigators in my psyche for this pervasive form of artistic/self expressions/vandalisms/annoy/defy others markings that are ever more visible. You might want to avoid me when I come across spray painted artistic expressions on rock formations, grave markers, historic buildings……. 

Projects up the Historic Columbia River Highway