Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Why put flags on trail signs? You won't believe the reason.

There was a letter in the Gazette's opinion section today lambasting the Friends of the Peak for putting up fiberglass markers for the Ring the Peak Trail on Section 16. The writer thought they were unnecessary, unsightly, and worst of all, he said, the markers each have a small American flag on them.
"as if you might somehow fail to remember what country you woke up in this morning."
I won't get into the trail marker debate, but I have a funny answer for why the flags are there. At first, there were no flags on the markers, and the markers kept getting vandalized, stolen, or knocked down. Another trail group told the Friends of the Peak that American flags would help stop the destruction (this was closer to 9/11 and before the Iraq war was quite so unpopular, so the flag had a little more heft in stirring sentiment than it might now.)
So, FOTP stuck flag stickers on almost every marker.
Did it work? I once asked club president Mary Burger.
"Not really," she said.
You know what I bet would work better? A cute picture of kittens.

1 comment:

Zen said...

I heard that FOTP and PPNF had sold the Ring the Peak sponsorship rights to Exxon. And Hummer. Billboards will be installed soon.

Just kidding.