LAKE TAHOE, Nev. — They hurl their questions aggressively, aiming to discomfort:
How would you feel if teenagers slung ropes over the Western Wall in Jerusalem to practice rappelling? Or rock climbers took to scaling the steeple of the National Cathedral in Washington? What if dirt bike racers rumbled each weekend through the somber fields of Gettysburg?
How would you feel?
Indignant, maybe? Appalled? Incensed?
Good. Then the Washoe Indians who posed those questions have made their point. They have forced you to consider how they feel watching rock climbers crawl over one of their most sacred sites--a towering plug known as Cave Rock that juts up from the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe.
But before you sign on with the Washoe cause, consider the climbers.
They, too, revere the rock. From around the globe, they come to worship it in their own way, through sweat and strain, by hauling themselves up its steep, forbidding crags. Cave Rock offers some of the most challenging climbs in the world, and the athletes have marked each one by drilling 300 bolts into the landmark's surface.
And so two cultures stake claims to this one rock.
The Washoe want the climbers out. The climbers refuse to abandon their routes. Both sides are angry. And it's up to the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the rock, to figure out a solution.
In deference to the Washoe--who view Cave Rock as a potent source of spiritual power--the Forest Service in February ordered climbers to keep off the rock for the rest of the year.
The climbers threatened a lawsuit, arguing that the government cannot shape its policies to bolster any one religion--including the Washoe creed. Taken aback, Forest Service administrators agreed to reconsider their decision.
In the meantime, the rock remains in limbo. The Washoe and the climbers remain antagonists, their conflict fanned by nasty letters to the local paper and acid comments about who really loves the rock most.
As Darriel Bender, a Washoe elder, put it: "There is no middle ground."
Bender remembers journeying to the rock as a child. But he never got close enough to touch its spiny cliff. Few Washoe do.
For according to Washoe tradition, Cave Rock is so charged with spiritual energy that only certain elders dare approach it. And even they must tread with care. Bender recalls that his uncle, a Washoe medicine man, would spend days working his way to the top of the rock, pausing often for spiritual renewal.
