[pct-l] water cache sabotage

[Amanda L Silvestri]

I think we must accept that like them or not, water caches have become a part of the trail.  Even if one does not believe that others should depend upon them, people do.  Knowing that people depend on these water supplies and removing, damaging or destroying them, makes the person who does so responsible for the fate of the person who is depending upon that water.

It is not as simple a matter as you put it there without permission, so I am going to remove it, and I don't need permission to do so any more than you did to put it there in the first place.  The issue now is more about what is customary and expected and depended upon.

Someone who is counting on that water being there has the right to do so because custom says that it will be there.  Granted, it is not always there but generally speaking, it is.  Now if I go and remove that water, the person who was counting upon it could suffer or even die as a result.  Should he have counted on that water being there?  Perhaps not, but the point is, people do.  We all know this.

The question has been asked if people would commit violence on someone for removing the water.  The point that I think needs to be emphasized, is that violence has already been committed by removing the water in the first place. 

So let me ask this; Knowing that people do depend on that water, is anyone willing to kill a hiker just because they don't like the plastic bottles being left out on the trail?  Whoever made the holes in the bottles did not remove them, so the issue does not appear to be the esthetics's of a pristine trail.  This was an act of viciousness, an act of violence toward all those who hike the trail.  I believe that this person whoever he or she is and regardless of their motives could and should be arrested for attempted man shatter.  

Shepherd