During this past week I received an official booklet from the U.S. Forest Service. In it they detailed plans for developing a 10-mile (approximately) section of the Curley Lewis Highway. They've been heating these plans on a front burner for a couple of years.
I noticed that one of the projects they proposed has been dropped: they won't expand and develop a big show at the Spectacle Lake lookout. Originally they described a parking lot, bathrooms, picnic area, and a large interpretive sign. It's all quietly gone.
When this was a part of the original proposal, most people chuckled. They remembered the last sign and the last "development" at the lookout. Everything was destroyed. The massive sign burned, left hanging for a long time.
The people at the Forest Service don't say why they dropped the Spectacle Lake idea, but if two or three people had much of a chance to think about it, someone would undoubtedly guess "vandalism".
This is a touchy subject.
Trouble with destruction usually leads to the generalization that it's trouble with kids. Trouble with kids means family, and pretty quickly a rational conversation can get irrational.
We have destruction here - stupid, expensive, hurtful destruction. It can't all be laid at the tennis-shoed feet of a bunch of kids. Sometimes maturity takes a long time to cook.
But we do have a problem.
Things get broken, and that takes money and time to fix. But there are other costs. Maybe a Spectacle Lake Overlook doesn't happen. Or maybe no one is willing to put bathrooms, or picnic tables at a beach because they get trashed. Decisions are made and sometimes projects killed because no one wants to see effort wasted and good things destroyed.
This is one of those problems that cut across a lot of lines. It's a factor the tribe's Executive Council has wrestled with for years. School boards deal with it every year. It's in school budgets. It's part of township life, and I think it's in the thinking of a new Forest Service project.
It's part of all our histories. We were all there once. Not necessarily doing damage (I will plead the Fifth), but certainly knowing who did what and when.
Years ago some of us suggested that the Sault Schools hold back damage money and promise classes that, whatever the schools didn't have to spend on broken bathroom mirrors and kicked in windows and doors, the kids could use for a project. The plan had a lot of backing and it worked. The schools saved money and grief.
The Bay Mills Boys & Girls Club is trying to find creative ways to include and confront juvenile problems. Vandalism may be a part of it. They might consider traditional ideas, maybe a circle, or other ways of bringing the problem inside. They're putting together an oversight committee now. Good for them.
If one cure worked, it would be easy. But this sort of problem is going to take creativity, stomach, and the willingness to keep it rational. The first step is in understanding what it's doing to all of us.
Pat Egan is the former publisher of the Sault Evening News. He is a recipient of the William Allen White award for editorial writing. He and his wife Debra live at Salt Point.
