Sheltered from Nature - Tragedy in Yosemite

When I was a kid, my family one summer took a road trip from our home in the Bronx to Niagara Falls.  It was a memorable trip but one of the things I remember as a id was the deadly allure of the falls.  The rapids above the precipice both fascnated me and struck me with a sense of horror because, if you fell in, it was certain death.  For me as a young girl (I recall I was 8 or 9 years old), I read all the tourist literature about those persons who decided to take a trip over the falls or did so involuntarily.  That summer, even my Tales From the Crypt comic boks could not match the horror of those stories.

I went back to that summer with this news story:

But then Bibee noticed that three other people had also crossed over, and were "taking pictures and being stupid."
And then, as he watched in horror, one of them, a young woman, slipped. In an instant, she was sliding away, carried toward the precipice as onlookers screamed.
"The woman goes first," Bibee said. "Then the older gentleman at that point falls in. I'm watching the two of them being swept away. I'm starting to jet for the edge. It's just instinct. But Amanda says, 'No, no, don't go!' Then there was another guy I hadn't seen. I didn't see him fall in.
"But he looks back, just as he's being swept over the edge. I knew then they were not going to make it. They're going over the waterfall."

"The woman goes first."  Three young adults on a church outing defied the barricades set up above Vernal Falls in Yosemite and waded out into the Merced River, about 25 feet from the edge of the falls, just goofing around.  And ultimately that act caused them to plummet 317 feet.

It would easy to dismiss this story with, "They were just being stupid and look where it got them."  But I think there is a meta-message here.  Now, Vernal Falls is not as large a waterfall as Niagara.  But still, the story begins with the comment, you have to respect the water.  I think there is a problem in that people are so sheltered from risk that they cannt recognize it when they come face-to-face with it.  Our cellphones have become these totems of safety - after all, if I am in trouble, can't I simply dial 9-1-1 and help will be here?  Or why would the park service put a barrier that was so easy to climb over if it was really that dangerous?

We live in a  society - and California especially - where the rental of a bounce house for a child's bithday party requires executing a waiver of liability.  At my former parish, we were strictly admonished by the Diocese not to have a dunk tank, for fear of "someone getting hurt."  Have we got to a point that unless every risk is specifically brought to our attention, we can't see it?  It would seem to me that even if there were no signs or no barriers, common sense would dictate that goofing around near the precipice of a waterfall is potentially harmful to the point of being lethal.  But whether it's the novice climber thinking he can summit Denali in Alaska and call for help when a storm blows in, or the tourist who approaches a bear in our national parks "for a good picture," we seem to have lost respect for nature and perhaps think it has been tamed and sanitized by "civilization" and "technology."

Rest in peace, youngsters.  I wait to see what ther deaths will bring - a lawsuit against the federal government for "failure to warn" adequately?  Closing the trail for everyone?  All visitors required to sign a waiver?

Do we really need that?