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The Very Large Array west of Socorro is a very long way, I hope, from being carved into scrap metal, melted and turned into studs for the walls of some future Wal-Mart. In the meantime, the feds and New Mexico should arrange instead to preserve the VLA forever, as a world monument to the best in human aspirations.

For me, the radio telescopes beat the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China and other wonders in awesomeness, poignancy and respect for the Homo sapiens endeavor. That's no exaggeration.

I remember being struck speechless the first time I emerged from the trees along U.S. 60 and saw the dishes of the VLA - cocked attentively, like huge, mechanical white poppies, toward the vastness of space. It was 1980, the year the VLA was officially dedicated. In 2006, its power to observe and astonish is increasing, as it undertakes ongoing upgrades and expansions.

The contrast the dishes make with the remote, desolate Plains of San Augustin is stunning.

The plains are the remains of a broad, Pleistocene Era lake, and they look it, in all their post-glacial serenity. The hills and trees that ring it and the gently rolling lake bed itself are made by nature - random, ragged, simple, solemnly gorgeous and content to be exactly what they are.

The dishes, 82 feet wide and nearly as tall as 10-story buildings when pointing straight up, cut across the skyline like a precision blade. There are 27 of them, arranged along railroad tracks in a Y-shaped configuration that can grow to 22 miles in diameter when fully extended. Anything but random, they focus in unison on unseen objects, with an unearthly intensity.

The array is mankind's most dramatic, visible connection with the infinite. As you stand there, gawking at the array, you immediately absorb the reality that it is searching for galactic phenomena billions of miles distant, with lives far older than Earth's. It is the image of humankind paying attention, pondering, striving for some understanding of the immensity of The Mystery. It is the symbol and the reality of Homo sapiens lifting our gaze from the mundane and opening our arms outward to the fullness of existence.

VLA spokesman Dave Finley tells me the array lately is developing a mosaic of images of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, our galaxy. The VLA has examined the black hole before. It now is taking a broad view of the target using a lower frequency of radio waves than has been tried previously - just to see if something else interesting pops up. Such is the nature of the routine at the VLA these days.

The VLA is at home in the Land of Enchantment. It reminds me of those straight, other-worldly roads emanating from the ruins at Chaco - another monument here of international note.

The VLA belongs here, not in a museum; certainly not in a scrap heap. Let's take the long view and start the monument movement now.

Ehn is Tribune opinion editor.