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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – A glowing monolith found deep in the Utah desert was striking, a mysterious beacon that immediately caught the attention of a world struggling with a punitive pandemic casting a veil over the holiday season .
Revealed publicly shortly before Thanksgiving, it drew hundreds of people to a remote land of red rocks to see and touch the otherworldly edifice that evoked both sci-fi movies and famous works by state land-art.
But the new arrivals have also razed plants with their cars and left human waste in the hinterland without a bathroom. Now two men known for extreme sports in Utah’s vast outdoor landscapes say it was that kind of damage that got them late into the night and wreck it.
Sylvan Christensen and Andy Lewis have many online subscribers for their articles on skydiving and slacklining like skydiving which is like walking a tightrope in the outdoors. In videos posted to Instagram and YouTube, they said they were part of a group that pushed the hollow stainless steel structure and carried it in a wheelbarrow.
Christensen said in a statement provided to media on Tuesday night that the ground was not prepared for the influx and that his federal managers could not hope to keep pace.
“The mystery was the craze and we want to use this time to unite the people behind the real issues here – we are losing our public lands – things like this don’t help,” he wrote.
He said the group supported art and artists, but said it was an “ethical failure” to cut into the rock to erect the monolith, and that the damage caused by “Internet sensationalism” was worse.
The group’s action left many disappointed people who had traveled long distances to see the sparkling silver structure, only to find the site empty except for a triangular sheet of metal on a hole in the ground.
But the withdrawal may not have broken the law. San Juan County Sheriff Jason Torgerson said Wednesday they could not investigate a property theft case because no one had come forward to claim the structure as theirs. The original creator remains a mystery.
“The monolith has been abandoned on public property,” Torgerson said in an email to The Associated Press. Since it was put there without permission in the first place, the original facility is also under investigation, he said.
A similar structure that appeared last week in Romania has also subsequently disappeared.
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