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THE SILENT CRY OF A GIANT
By Joanna Andersen of Landers
I am awesome. I stand tall and proud. I am one of a kind. I weigh more than 100 thousand tons.
I triumphed against hot gasses, meteor showers, burning chemicals, several ice ages, thousands of earthquakes, millions of years of
blistering heat, sand blasting winds, deluging rains and floods, lightening strikes, sleet, snow and hail, below freezing temperatures and long droughts.
No living thing on earth, past or present could have withstood the extreme atmospheric conditions I have braved with such fortitude. I
witnessed the beginning of life on earth. I saw the time of the dinosaurs. I gave shelter to the first humans. I have been admired, revered and respected and thought of as sacred by
many. The Indians called me "The Great Stone."
I stood for millions of years in the same place before "MAN" drove his first spike into my mighty hull. I've been climbed on,
stoned, burned, carved, dynamited and shot at with nearly every caliber of projectile known to man.
"Man" has chopped away at me, spit on me and spewed every human excrement on me. Worst of all he has defaced me with a mass of
caustic substances. Painting everything from simple words and names to depicting the most vile, repulsive evil words and pictorials known to so-called "humanity."
Since the existence of "humans," I have undergone a barrage of assaults. I have been left standing alone, stripped of my dignity
and respect only to see them return and assault me again. Does anyone care that I am unique, I am special, that I should be protected and admired?
They came in the second month of "their" new millennium (a measure of time not of my own) and once again set me ablaze. Then came
the cold, cold night and the loud sound of cracking near dawn. Alone, and to no avail, I struggled to hold myself together. Suddenly a huge chunk of my side broke away and hit the ground
with an enormous thud in a huge cloud of dust, exposing my brilliant white insides.
Within days, more bullies came to violate me still again with more obscenities and more chemicals. They could not and would not hear me
weep as I silently mourned my loss. It does not hold reasoning that something so big and so strong, is so defenseless. Ironically the only ones capable of protecting me are the very ones
destroying me. And so it goes with everything in nature that "Man" thinks is at his disposal.
It is difficult for me to confess my fear that even one as majestic as I, could be reduced to just an ordinary rock or even a grain of sand if left
in the hands of these so-called "Compassionate beings."
On a below freezing night in February 2000, some "humans" set a huge bon fire under the overhang of the big belly of Giant Rock in
Landers, CA. As the raging heat collided with the frigid cold, a huge chunk, the size of a large boat, fell off the side of Giant Rock. A couple of days later, people came with tar
and black spray paint and spewed obscenities on the beautiful pure white glistening rock’s insides.
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