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Arapiles campfires last night 24-Feb-2011 At 1:12:20 PM Tommo

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On 23/02/2011 Wendy wrote:
>Woo hoo, I'm Zen ... I can't imagine too many less Zen people in the world,
>but hey. If you were in visual contact to tell me how a hammer to a guitar
>managed to hit a head (as well as the guitar which I understood to have
>been destroyed), that would be an eye witness account. Maybe he was blocking
>the hammer heading for his head with the guitar? Maybe he bowed in remorse,
>putting his head in the firing line of the hammer headed for the guitar
>in his lap? He was throwing the guitar in the fire to burn and leaning
>forward threw him in the firing line of the hammer?
>
>We've all been in campsites with loud, obnoxious people before. If polite
>requests don't work, a bit of swearing from the tent is entirely understandable,
>but you can always move away. In the long run, it's far less effort.
>Given those guys were set up long term, i imagine it was fairly clear that
>theirs would be a noisy site to any new arrivals. There's always space
>to set up in the peace and quiet of the North campground.

Oh dear.

Wendy, I assume you were there? Perhaps you were even part of the pleasant fire circle of '09? I hope not, because your posts on Chocky suggest you are a nice climber person, and any participants in the disrespect that group showed the climbing community, and simply other humans, are questionable people. Anyhow, this is not about you, and we certainly have no reason to pick a bone with each other. Peace.

Everyone in the campground that night were affected. I'm sure the Wendys' slept soundly, others were mildly annoyed, some were boiling with rage (me) and some, after several polite requests, came in swinging a hammer (lets not debate the kinesiology or intentions of the hammer swing). The moral of the story is that humans can be really pathetic. When individual(s) impact the experience of a large number of people in a detrimental way, no one tends to do anything about it (the same scum-bags pissing everyone off at the Nati film night, in the lead up to the scuffle, was a bewildering example). If everyone banded together to request a change or outcome, perhaps things wouldn't explode as often. If faced with a pleasant request by a dozen of your peers (eg. to put an illegal fire out) then the shame will always be more effective than other means. I reckon the next illegal fire or social issue at Araps could be effectively dealt with in this way. The story above is not an debate about the merits of violence. Oh no. But I will never let those a**holes appear as they were the victims, as long as the story is told, through the ages, around the (hopefully legal) firelight in the pines. Or internet forums.