Southwestern Coloradoans have probably heard the story of the two men who managed to get a Dodge pickup and a Jeep Wrangler stuck on a slope near Silverton.

They ventured onto terrain that was off limits for good reason, and when they discovered they couldn’t retreat, they drove downhill until they couldn’t drive any farther. Then they abandoned the vehicles and hiked off in search of help. Several days later, some local residents helped them recover the truck and the Jeep, spending seven hours to pull them back up onto a ledge. Their vehicles were just fine, and they spent the next day four-wheeling over the Black Bear Trail before heading home for Texas.

The terrain they tore up was not fine, however. The delicate tundra will take decades to recover, if it recovers at all, and the fine of $600 each — all the BLM could levy — seems an insignificant punishment for damaging something that might never be the same.

When they left, one of them said, "You tell everybody those stupid Texans are coming back next year."

The land manager responsible for the slope where Alan and Gary Hatcher were stranded was restrained in his opinion about their return. "This had better have been a big learning experience for them and anyone who thinks about going off-road," said Kent Hoffman, area field manager for the BLM.

Much has been made of the linkage of "stupid" and "Texans," and their mountain stunt seems to support such a conclusion. Indeed, they seemed proud of being Texans (an acceptable form of loyalty to the republic, we suppose) and equally proud of being somewhat less than intelligent. There’s a third factor that hasn’t received as much attention, one that’s dependent on neither intelligence nor state of origin. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, or even a Colorado native, to understand why you shouldn’t destroy property you share with millions of other people. That’s a matter of simple respect, and it’s a concept that needs to be emphasized to everyone who uses Colorado’s public lands.

Tourism has many positive aspects. By its very nature, though, it involved people who will only spend a few days here and may never come back. It’s natural that they don’t care quite as much as we do about the mess they might leave behind. That’s why it’s essential that all of us take responsibility for our public lands because it’s the right thing to do, not just because of the impacts on our own private use of those places.

A self-avowed stupid Texan has just as much right to the mountain slopes as we do, and we have just as little right to abuse the land as he does. We stay here after the visitors are gone, though, so it’s to our benefit to enlist their cooperation. We’ve learned how to enjoy the land without tearing it up; there’s no reason we shouldn’t hold everyone to the same rules.