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Show He ate the berries from stream banks, but never cut bushes or dammed the watercourses. He lived on the land, but owned it not. Father Escalante came once, and soon Brigham Young and his settlers arrived. They cut trees from the mountainsides to build houses, stores, and churches. They cut granite from the towering walls and erected a monument to God. They dammed the streams to store water. Their cattle left little grass for the deer and antelope. They built mills and factories, and they watched steel rails cross the salt lake. Brigham's garden was still a good garden, but it's fruit was bad, producing men of progress. It was the garden of men who did not know gardens. They dug out great piles of earth for green ore, or burrowed underground like rats searching for grain. And justly, the mountains and deep snows slid down and buried them occasionally. All of the trees were gone from the canyons and most of the streams imprisoned. Roads proliferated, surfaced with asphalt and concrete, cut switchback swaths up mountains and shot arrow-like across the desert. On the divided, subdivided and fenced range, what the cattle didn't eat the sheep did. Mesquite and sage grew where grass had been. 20 |