ADVENTURE ...What’s in a name?
Adventure is everywhere,
On the land, on the sea, or in the air!
Turn around, what do you see...ADVENTURE!
Adventure everywhere!
The Mickey Mouse Club
Recently I Googled "Moab" and "adventure" on my computer and came up with 480,000 hits. Apparently there are adventures enough to be found in Moab to keep tourists entertained and spending their money until the next Millennium. Just to mention a handful, I found the Moab Adventure Center, Moab Adventure Xstream, Moab Adventure Headquarters, Moab Adventure Inn, Moab Adventure Package, Moab Adventure Guide, Moab Desert Adventures, Adventure Xscapes, Adventure Racing Retreats, Moab Resort Adventure Package and a link to the Moab Adventure Park, from WWTI Newswatch50 in, of all places, Watertown, New York. They reported the following:
MOAB, Utah - Riding down the ski lift from the highest point on the red-rock rim overlooking the Moab Valley in Utah, our feet dangled some 800 feet in the air as Scott McFarland talked about the latest project for his Moab Adventure Park. "We're applying for permits for a zip-line, a 2,500-foot-long cable that goes from the top of the hill to the bottom," McFarland said. "You get into a harness on the top and cruise to the bottom, kind of like you're flying.
"Without a braking system, you'd hit about 145 miles per hour. With the system, you'll go 50 or 60. That's on the computer, anyway. We'll see." One of the city's concerns in considering the permits is its noise ordinance. Nearby residents are worried about screams coming from riders zipping down the cliff. "
Sad to say that’s one adventure we’ll never have to embrace, thanks to one of my favorite environmental groups, The Nature Conservancy, who bought the tram and removed it from the face of the earth.
By comparison, if you travel just 55 miles south to the sleepy Mormon/cowboy hamlet of Monticello, the "adventure" falls off dramatically, to just 759. What do you expect from a town without a brew pub? I kept searching for an adventure-free town and the best I could hope for was Benkelman, Nebraska that could only muster 154 hits and Gnaw Bone, Indiana with a paltry 64.
At the other end of the adventure scale, nearby Aspen, Colorado kicks Moab’s relatively passive ass with 1,890,000 adventure hits and New York City, the Gotham of all Thrills, generates an incredible 8,370,000 hits. But if you can believe this, according to Google, you can find four times as many adventures in New York as you can in Baghdad, which produced less than 2 million hits. That is a telling piece of information. Just what kinds of adventures are we talking about?
And what exactly is an "adventure?" According to one internet dictionary, an adventure is, "an undertaking or enterprise of a hazardous nature," or "an undertaking of a questionable nature (both sound like Baghdad to me as well as certain areas of the Big Apple)."
Or... "an unusual or exciting experience."
This is the definition I was looking for. This is the kind of adventure that tourists are in search of when they come to places like Moab. Most if not all of the "Moab Adventure " Google hits are commercial enterprises, anxious and eager to provide an "exciting and unusual experience" for the paying public. Their businesses certainly CANNOT be, to even a modest degree, "hazardous in nature." I doubt if any adventure tour company could survive if its owners faced their first customers of the day and announced, "Listen up people... we want all of you to understand that there’s a real good chance only half of you will survive this hike to the Fiery Furnace...the rest of you will probably die in free falls or rock collapses. So call your friends and family now and tell them how much you love ‘em."
And forget about experiences of a "questionable nature." Add to the previous warning this addendum: "And don’t forget our climbing equipment is as old as my granny and she passed on in 1965, so don’t be surprised if that ol’ rotten frayed rope we use snaps like a dry twig."
No...none of this would pass muster. Instead, the adventure tour companies must endure all kinds of inspections, meet various federal standards, and pay substantial insurance premiums, to insure that the "adventure" is as free of hazards as humanly possible. It’s okay for the customer to get excited, and compared to the workaday/cubicle life he or she leaves behind to come on this adventure vacation, how could it be anything but? But is it really an adventure?
I have my own adventure definition—I would call it a "spontaneously sought, poorly planned, even stupidly conceived exploration of a mystery." Spontaneity is critical to an adventure. How can an adventure be planned and scheduled? And a real adventure should have an unknown component to it...maybe there will be hazards ahead...maybe not. Who knows? It’s a Mystery!!
But this is what it’s become:
"Now let’s see Kimberly...I’m thinking...an adventure that starts around 10am would be perfect because I want to have a leisurely breakfast at the Jailhouse Café. Love the eggs benedict! Then maybe a rappel somewhere? Or would you rather do a boat thing? No more than $100...$150 tops. And back here by four for drinks at McStiff’s....does that sound perfect or what?"
I know...I know! Once again, I’m out of touch with Mainstream Adventure America and how can I argue with 480,000 Google hits and a booming adventure economy? (I think even a couple of my advertisers have "adventure" in there somewhere). But like so many other words—wilderness—for instance, an adventure just isn’t what it used to be, or even mean. I’ll take my adventures as they come, unplanned, unscheduled, free, and if it kills me, I just hope I don’t die with a cell phone clutched in my hand, frantically punching 911 as I hurtle toward the greatest adventure of them all.
"DYNAMO JIM STILES"
If this doesn’t give me some credence as an adventurous type, I don’t know what will. Someone told me that the first issue of The Zephyr was being auctioned on eBay and while searching for it, I discovered this out-of-print book. This is from the book description:
"James Stiles was a banker and educator. Most notably, he was the publisher of the Nassau (County, NY) Post, Daily Review and Review-Star. His newspapers, and other local work like his stints as director of Roosevelt Raceway and trustee and chairman of Adelphi College, were key in the growth of this New York City bedroom community."
Strange. Here’s the cover.
SUWA, can you spare a dime?"
When I made southeast Utah my home, almost 30 years ago, I came for one reason—I came for the rocks—for the most stunning display of intricately carved, brilliantly hued red rocks imaginable. It’s the kind of place one can believe only exists in Dreams. I’ve lived here ever since.
I was very young when I arrived in Moab and like so many other wide-eyed idealists of the time, viewed the battle to save the canyon country’s dwindling wilderness lands in very black and white terms. And with good reason. Then, southeast Utah was still a vast, mostly unpopulated expanse of deserts and mountains, dotted with tiny communities that had changed little in a century, which depended mostly on the extractive industries for survival and which might, at best, get a small boost from tourism during the summer. And so environmentalists devoted their time and energy and resources to fight the threats to wildlands they thought were most persistent and enduring--mining, timber, and cattle
Naturally I went searching for kindred spirits, those individuals and groups that shared my love for the red rocks, hoping together we could save some of it. Among those Quixotic spirits was the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. When SUWA was created, in the early 1980s, it was a small grass roots organization dedicated to preserving wilderness, with its headquarters in "the heart of the storm," Boulder, Utah. SUWA’s founders were burned in effigy in nearby Escalante, and the group gained a reputation early-on for being the little guys who weren’t afraid of a fight.
In the late-80s, under the leadership of Brant Calkin, SUWA expanded its membership base dramatically, made Utah wilderness a national issue and pushed forward with a 5.7 million acres wilderness bill. Brant is almost regarded as a patron saint among environmentalists. A few years ago, Scott Groene, SUWA’s current Executive Director wrote, "Brant Calkin is the best damn environmentalist that ever worked on the Colorado Plateau, and he’s done more to protect southern Utah wilderness than anyone alive or dead." Groene noted Calkin’s ascetic approach to environmentalism. "Brant offered his staff low pay but lots of autonomy to ‘do good and fight evil.’... He offered as rationale both that environmentalists have an obligation to spend their members' money wisely..." Through it all, Brant did his job, "with a quiet humility, integrity, and basic decency towards both his opponents and friends."
And he shared the Executive Director’s $20,000 a year with the Associate Director until his retirement in 1993.
"Brant never stopped working," Groene noted, " whether it was leading the Utah Wilderness Coalition out of shaky consensus efforts, hustling money, or fixing a fleet a beater SUWA cars (he was renown for resurrecting aging office equipment and trucks). And when it seemed everything was done, he'd start cleaning the office. "
Brant also believed the key to success was to "build the membership," and by the mid-90s SUWA was financially secure and its membership had grown nationwide to more than 20,000.
But if it’s true that most good deeds go unrewarded, SUWA is a notable exception. In the late-90s SUWA suddenly found itself flush with money. A million dollar grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts and a $524,000 contribution from the Wyss Foundation put the once struggling Utah wilderness group into a different financial realm. The Wyss donation was particularly fortuitous. Its founder, Swiss-born Hansjorg Wyss, became a member of SUWA’s Board of Directors in 1996 and is its current chairman. Wyss is a multi-billionaire who is the president of Synthes, an international company that manufactures biotech and surgical implants. In 2004, Forbes Global called Wyss the 26th wealthiest person in Europe with almost $6 billion; by 2005 he rose to 18th place with an accumulated wealth of almost $8 billion. That’s right...billion.
Hansjorg Wyss’s contributions to SUWA include a $900,000 building in downtown Salt Lake City and another $500,000 in renovations. The old three-story home is now SUWA’s very comfortably appointed headquarters (memories of Brant fixing aging office equipment almost seem quaint) and contributions from Wyss and others have swelled SUWA’s financials. According to its 2004 tax return, SUWA has almost $5 million in "net assets and fund balances," including $2.5 million in "savings and temporary cash investments" and nearly $300,000 in "non-interest bearing cash (imagine keeping that kind of cash reserve in an account that draws zero interest)." It has mutual funds and stock investments and a Charles Schwaab account worth almost $1 million and another $1 million in land, buildings and equipment.
With all those assets, plans are now being finalized to hold a gala party in late May as a tribute to Hansjorg Wyss. The event, to be held at a posh hotel in New York City, will cost about $100,000. But according to SUWA, "it’s a fund raising event...(it) will raise us money."
I have to askHow much more money does SUWA need?
No one can fault SUWA for its good fortune but Utah’s most prominent environmental organization is starting to look more like a bank. And while its coffers have grown, its membership, according to a SUWA source, has fallen by almost 30% to less than 14,000.
Meanwhile, threats to Utah’s wildlands are becoming more complicated and more diverse. The explosion of growth in "New West" towns like Moab and St. George, to name just a couple, are creating environmental impacts unheard of 20 years ago. Urban sprawl isn’t confined to Salt Lake City anymore. Wildlife habitat in rural parts of Utah is being threatened by residential and commercial development. Non-motorized recreation and the commercial exploitation of national parks and proposed wilderness areas are affecting a key component of wilderness—solitude. And a proposed dam on the Bear River and a pipeline from Lake Powell to St. George will surely create another thorny bundle of environmental nightmares.
And yet, while SUWA remains Utah’s most vigilant watchdog in areas of ORV abuse, oil and gas exploration and public lands grazing, it steadfastly refuses to involve itself in any of these "New West" issues. SUWA insists it is a wilderness organization, with the very specific goal of establishing a 9.3 million acre BLM wilderness bill. It is reluctant to spend a penny on worthy causes that fall outside that self-imposed restriction. "Our top priority," says Executive Director Groene, "is protecting our wilderness proposal. Until we have protected the lands that qualify as wilderness, the issues outside our boundaries will be lower priorities." He calls the SUWA surplus its "war chest, for use in emergencies or when extraordinary opportunities arise, and with board approval." SUWA’s rainy day fund.
In case they haven’t noticed...it’s raining buckets.
So, if SUWA isn’t willing to become involved in some of these other pressing issues that fall outside the realm of BLM wilderness, perhaps SUWA can part with some of its surplus and give it to organizations that will. Just off the top of my head and without asking any of them if they need extra funding, I can think of several worthy Utah environmental groups: The High Uintahs Preservation Council, the Utah Rivers Council, the Nine Mile Coalition, the Utah Environmental Congress, Save Our Canyons, Friends of the Great Salt Lake and my sentimental favorite, the Glen Canyon Institute. I’m sure this barely scratches the surface of worthy would-be recipients. But all of these organizations are doing good and noble work and when someone with SUWA’s assets can lend a hand, why not?
Ultimately aren’t we all on the same side? Don’t all these groups share a common goal—to improve the quality of Utah’s natural resources and to preserve and protect the beauty of a landscape that is dear to us all? Brant Calkin urged SUWA to "spend its money wisely." What could be wiser and ultimately more satisfying than sharing its largesse where it can accomplish the most?
MOAB CITY COPS...
LEAVE THE ZEPHYR WEBMASTER ALONE!!!
For the last couple of years, the Zephyr web site has been managed and maintained with skill and reliability by Moabite Gary Henderson. He’s also a baker at Red Rock Bakery (and a longtime advertiser) on Main Street.
Three times now in the last couple of months, Gary has been "pulled over" by Moab’s finest while riding his BICYCLE to work in the early morning hours.
He was forced to provide ID, though clearly he had done nothing wrong and was even required to explain a "lump in his pocket" that the police thought looked suspicious.
This is nothing new for the Moab Police Department; I personally experienced this kind of harassment (though not quite so direct) a little more than a year ago. And many Moabites have their own stories to tell.
I hope that Chief Navarre and Mayor Dave Sakrison and the City Council will pay a bit more attention to these kinds of incidents. Maybe you guys could table a few subdivision proposals for a while and devote some time to the well being of your constituents...it seems to me that’s about all the city and county governments ever deal with nowadays.
And leave Gary alone!
