As one who has stood inside Maeshowe many years ago and been entranced, I'd like to ask the question what, precisely, we would be saving such monuments for, if we were to close them to tourism to preserve them? Obviously, everything that can be done to protect them should be done, but if that were to mean barring them from the general public or opening them only to archaeologists, it would be a sad thing. I can also remember visiting Stonehenge, before the barriers.... The question has even more serious meaning in light of the growing risk of true ecological disasters, which are far more pressing. If we succeed in killing ourselves as a species, due to overpopulation, global warming, or merely find Orkney buried under new glaciers, it won't mean much that some old stone monuments, however meaningful to human history, have been marred by being breathed upon, or had their stones worn away a fraction. I have also spent some time in Pompeii, and am thankful I had the chance, given the very real possibility that Vesuvius will erupt and the whole place will be buried afresh in my lifetime. Should I, then, not have tramped around it? I'm actually far more worried about eco-tourism, in which people with too much money and curiosity rush to "unspoiled" places only to spoil them with their leavings (good God, look at the trash-filled slopes of Everest), though if the choice is between a completely demolished habitat and one that has been saved because tourists pay better than poachers, so be it. (This cannot be said of Everest. Not being a mountain climber, I cannot imagine what thrill there is in risking others' lives so that one can be the thousandth-and-something person to stand in a given spot for 15 oxygen-depleted minutes of one's personal fame. And not even to bother to stash one's trash....) At any rate, we do over-estimate how "lasting" are any of our human monuments. Just as there is no point in locking great artworks in a vault to "preserve" them from anyone but the curators, I think the accomplishments of the past should be saved, as much as possible, from damage and pollution, but with no true hope of immortality. How many of Praxiteles' statues will we never see? How many books burned with the library of Alexandria? Meanwhile, I recall being somewhat sickened even in the '70s at the amount of trash casually tossed around Stromness Bay, and protesting to native Orcadians about it, who appeared puzzled that it should matter. In those days, when we American baby boomers had been taught a horror of littering, and I would as soon commit theft as fail to hang onto my trash until I found a proper bin for it, I was utterly nauseated in my travels around Scotland - surely one of the most awesomely beautiful countries on earth - to find schoolchildren (and adults) tossing chips bags straight out the window of the bus, as readily in the most beautiful glens of the Highlands as the dirtiest streets in London. Well, our freeway verges may have caught up with yours, but it doesn't make me any less sick. So, given the choice, I'd worry less about Maeshowe and more about Kirkwall's city dump, or the effects of oil spills, or anything else that ruins the beauty (and sustainability) of an earth that all the architects and artists in the world could never duplicate. Peggy Stone