Earlier this week, a nature program showed an elephant eating a watermelon. His jaws crushed the melon as he used his trunk to stuff it into his mouth, and the juice squirted out onto the ground, leaving him with a mouthful of bitter rind.

The similarities with the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument were hard to escape. Those who believe the monument is being rammed down their throats should be careful not to spit out the sweet juice. Like it or not, a proclamation is imminent, and the wisest among us will make the best of it.

There will be benefits, although there’s no denying they have costs associated with them. Increased tourist traffic west of town will increase revenue to Cortez. Mesa Verde visitors have the choice of lodging in Durango, but Canyon of the Ancients visitors will be much more likely to patronize Cortez motels, restaurants and shops. The traffic will pass through here; we might as well provide the services visitors desire. No one will benefit from having those visitors driven off by nasty protesters who lost their ill-conceived bid to stave off a change in management status.

The costs are two-fold: potential damage to the ancestral Puebloan sites and an ecosystem that looks indestructible but that is actually quite fragile, and all the inconveniences associated with life in a tourist town. The former can, we hope, be mitigated in the management plan for the new national monument, if Congress actually funds the protections the designation is designed to provide. The latter may be inevitable, because we have, like it or not, styled ourselves as a tourist community. The only question that remains there is whether we can be a successful one.

Those who fear the loss of the multiple land uses historically allowed on the BLM lands that will be included in the monument are the ones with the bitterest taste in their mouths, but there’s a little sweetness to be had there as well. Opponents of a change in status have raised every possible specter, and it’s likely that some of those can now be dismissed. Many of those opponents probably will always view the federal government as the devil, but soon it’s going to be the devil we know. We’ll know exactly what restrictions the Clinton Administration plans to place upon land use. Rational observers have never believed that Bruce Babbitt ever intended to inflict upon us every torture the Southwestern Landowners Association could imagine. It’s entirely possible that he plans to be quite reasonable, particularly if we act reasonably as well. Unfortunately, the most reasonable among us have not been the most vocal.

A proclamation is in the offing. The rumor mill suggests that the president might make the announcement as early as today, when he declares another monument in California, or perhaps next Monday when he visits Shiprock. We hope he won’t. We don’t want to be lumped with California, and Shiprock and its people deserve 100 percent of his attention. Even if it doesn’t happen this week or next, though, a national monument is coming. We can’t avoid it; all we can do is capitalize on it.

‘When life hands you a lemon,’ the saying goes, ‘make lemonade.’ Those naysayers who convinced Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell to drop his national conservation area bill may find lemonade is at least preferable to eating crow.