The Spoilers

About 99 million vacationers will visit the 201 U.S. national parks this year. They will bring with them a love of nature and a sense of wonder at the beauty that has been preserved against the onrush of progress. They will also bring with them thousands of cans of spray paint and the lust to desecrate.

The aerosol paint can is science's contribution to the ancient art of public defacement, and the vacant-minded or vicious are taking to it in ever-increasing numbers--gleefully spraying their names, initials, class numerals and favorite biological functions over national monuments and natural wonders. The taxpayers' bill for cleaning up after them is getting higher all the time.

Immortal in Lipstick. Cleaning up is not easy, either. Only this spring has the Park Service figured out how to cope with the problem of Box Canyon. Box Canyon, in Mount Rainier National Park, contains such a remarkable example of glacial action that in 1957 the park ran a blacktop trail into the canyon and put up a marker calling attention to the phenomenon.

Visitors soon discovered that the smooth expanse of soft rock carved and polished by the glacier could easily be inscribed with personal data, and within no time there was a 300-ft.-long sweep of modern hieroglyphics. Last summer the first of the four-letter words appeared, to be followed by such a flood of pornographic graffiti that the better Boy Scout leaders struck Box Canyon off their lists of educational outings.

Sandblasting is no solution; it leaves behind it a whitened area that merely invites a new literary effort. But a new technique has now been devised, which combines light sandblasting with a stain made of umber and regional soils, and Box Canyon will soon look almost the way it did before--with the addition of a fence to keep the public at arm's length.

Also being tested in national park rest rooms is a new gravel-impregnated wall paint, designed to break a lipstick, crayon or pencil at the first stroke. But such anti-lipstick measures are useless against the girls who like to add their smears to ancient Indian carvings in rock so porous that the lipstick sinks in and becomes indelible.

Geyser Dousers & Sign Reversers. Literary and artistic work is just a part of the swath of destruction left by carefree vacationers. They tear out bathroom fixtures and pull up flowering plants. They use blasting powder to collect specimens of Indian hieroglyphics. They feed chocolate-covered laxatives to bear cubs and dump detergent into geysers. Sometimes they block up geysers with rocks and logs. They reverse signs on trails--a form of humor that has led to at least one near fatality. In Gettysburg they love to push over monuments.

And as they go, they leave behind them a spoor of debris. According to an organization called Keep America Beautiful, Inc., no less than half a billion dollars was spent during 1963 to pick up discarded litter.

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