And so it’s coming to this: death by bulldozer. It’s not how I thought I would go. I’m more of a choked-on-a-pizza-crust kind of girl. But after another whack-a-mole round of negotiations between developers and the Clark County Commission, I’m starting to have visions of myself in a construction standoff on Blue Diamond Hill, sitting, or perhaps sprawling on the dirt with a farewell adult beverage in hand, in front of a county-sanctioned bulldozer. I’ll be screaming in futility that Red Rock is sacred, I’ll be thinking about the nuanced differences between me and the Bundy clan and the Sioux Tribe, I’ll be loyally remembering the thousands of spiritual moments Red Rock Canyon has given me.
But ultimately, greed will demand that I be squished, along with the expendable lizards and Joshua Trees.
There’s only one reason that hill would ever be developed: greed. And aren’t we a city built unabashedly on it? So isn’t it reasonable to expect that a community based on gambling, made possible by damming the mighty Colorado River, would eventually destroy Red Rock National Conservation Area, too? Las Vegans, more overtly than most, enjoy a precarious relationship with vice and virtue, with irony and apathy. I love this city. But there are days I wish the earth would shift—as it did over the course of millions of years to create Red Rock—and devour us.
*****
The Seven Deadly Sins—greed, pride, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth—are thought to have been first identified as such by the Desert Fathers, a group of 3rd Century A.D. ascetics who gave all their possessions to the poor and went into the Egyptian desert seeking spiritual solitude. It was the desert that allowed them to reflect on human nature in a manner that guided Western spiritual thought for centuries thereafter. But greed is identified as a human frailty in most faiths and philosophies; it’s one of the three poisons in the Buddhist Wheel of Life, one of six negative thoughts of the Hindu Arishadvarga, and one of the many horrible values actor Michael Douglas’ slick corporate character touted in the 1987 movie Wall Street.
I was thinking about the Seven Deadly Sins the other day when I visited artist Ugo Rondinone’s “Seven Magic Mountains” in the desert south of Las Vegas. When I first visited the installation of brightly painted, stacked boulders last summer, I felt giddy about his outsized, clever commentary on Las Vegas’s unnaturally absurd presence in the middle of the desert. This time, though—a colder, windier, more sullen day with fewer tourists—I experienced the massive stacks of boulders as indictments of our hubris, and I thought Rondinone all the more insightful. I stood under the stack I dubbed “Greed” and asked it to calm down a tad. It seemed to chuckle. It glowed. It looked right past me, westward, toward Red Rock.
*****
Astronomers discovered seven Earth-like planets orbiting a star 235 trillion miles away from us last month. The news came at a serendipitous time for those of us weary of what we’ve done on our little plot of dirt lately. Right after I read about Trump’s plan to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, I read that at least three of those seven planets are believed to be habitable. After adding SpaceX to speed dial, I realized my foolishness: not that I can’t catch a ride to another planet, but that my greed, along with my pride, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath and envy, would go right along with me.
It’s hard not to want to explore the realms of our existence, to develop our civilization. I want to know what’s out there—way out there—too. But it’s our predicament that we struggle so much more with what’s right here on the inside.
May we make the nobler decisions sometimes. And may one of those times be on Blue Diamond Hill.
