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"Beauty is a terrifying thing ... But beauty will save the world."

These words from Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky explain the emotions behind the Bears Ears debate. Something precious is slipping away. Local land users dread federal absorption while tribes and conservationists deplore environmental degradation. Both sides love and fear different aspects of the same thing. The grandeur and majesty of San Juan County has sunk deep in their bones. But because it is so dear, beauty can turn us into fighters.

Is there a more beautiful place in the world than the winding canyons, towering monoliths and red sands of Cedar Mesa and beyond? Mysteries speak from its smallest nooks and widest skies. Riddles peek from the black windows of its hidden ruins. Traces of a once peopled region still haunt us. The erosion of these elements is slow poetry. Even those who live and climb in this land will never know its secrets. The place bleeds with spirit. It's sacred because it's undiscovered.

As a boy, I ranched and hiked the wilds of this patch of earth. Every summer my father would take us to the top of Bears Ears and point out the landmarks of the panorama. "There's Navajo Mountain and Monument Valley. Look, the Lukachukai in Arizona. Can you spy Shiprock barely poking up? And Sleeping Ute. Wow, there's still white on Lone Cone Peak." He told us that to see ourselves, we had to see the land.

This week Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell will visit San Juan County to hear local opinions on the various proposals for Bears Ears. I hope she considers the unintended consequences of a national monument. Instead of hallowing sacred space, a designation routinizes and domesticates it. Instead of protecting the environment, a national monument increases the human footprint. Instead of aiding native ceremonial rites, regulations limit access to wood and herbs. Instead of returning nature to a pristine state, the park service monetizes the land to expand its operations. Instead of opening up the scenery, the government cordons and partitions it. Crowds come, mystery leaves.

To capture beauty, you have to tame it. And in taming it, you lose it.

What was once wild and scarce now becomes part of the mass machinery of modern bureaucratic and commercial life. Tourists, T-shirts, toll booths and air-conditioned visitor centers tarnish the landscape. Advertising firms are hired to exploit its images. This is the practical cost of protecting beauty. Places transform into copies of their original selves. But perhaps there's no way around it in a world as overexposed as ours.

Nevertheless, the appetite of large, impersonal power rarely checks or trims itself. The safer route is the flexibility of broad local management adapting to local realities. Tribes, ranchers, environmentalists, the business community and government representatives are in the best position to hammer out solutions. Hopefully the Public Lands Initiative of Congressman Rob Bishop will enable such cooperation. In a society with so many competing interests, not everyone can expect to get what they want all the time.

I believe the majority of people on both sides of this debate have much in common. None of them want to overgraze the land, develop energy in sensitive spots, deface ancient ruins or destroy the terrain with four-wheelers. The disagreement often lies in the details of who should be in charge. But they also share anxiety over loss, loss of something special, something they perceive the other side trying to take away. But if our natural beauty is to make the world a better place, if it is to ennoble us and lift us beyond the deadening mechanisms of modern life, then we have to let it save us, not make us enemies.

Nathan Nielson, who lives in Kaysville, grew up ranching in San Juan County.