WHAT PRICE ‘VICTORY?’

Dear Zephyr, So much stink has been made about draining Lake Powell and restoring Glen Canyon, and perhaps it should be so. But it's my feeling that the flood of people already coming to the canyon country is causing and will cause a greater destruction than any reservoir of water could ever do. Fragile places like the Grand Canyon have already been over whelmed by a deluge of people numbering in the millions.

Money hungry guides and eco hiking expeditions stop at nothing in the name of beauty and solitude. Everything that is sacred and precious has been and will be exploited for the price of a ticket called wilderness and solitude. Fragile places like the Escalante River Canyon and the San Rafael Swell are already bending under the weight of thousands of hikers and campers who are trying to get away from it all. . ..soon it will be untold millions. Guide companies, outdoor magazines, wilderness books and yes-even newspapers have exploited and prostituted a fragile landscape in the name of thing called the Red Rock Country.

I think of Katie Lee's old book called 10,000 God Damn Cattle and think she should now write book called 10 Million God Damn People. It's hard to watch such a beautiful place die . . .kudos to the Colorado Plateau. "Call a place paradise . . . kiss it goodbye."

D.Hartley N.Arizona

LETTERS ABOUT ‘MAHBU’

Dear Jim Stiles,

Right on the money, honey! As usual. As a long time tree hugger, I've cultivated some serious depression about the unnecessary polarization; and I cringe when I see what some "nature lovers" do in the backcountry.

I wonder if it isn't the degree of common ground that causes the polarization. After all, marxists of various stripes spend more time attacking each other than they do capitalism. Dare I say that more christians have been killed by fellow christians? Often over trivial points of doctrine or practice. It is the overwhelming similarities that require the distinctions to be emphasized so bitterly. In time the similarities are forgotten and you risk a straight jacket and medication if you dare to bring it up. To all the earthie-hating rednecks out there: I'm ready to talk and it seems as though the Zephyr might serve as a place to start that dialogue.

I could never feel good about all the deforestation, open pit mines, etc. But the mark of a true reformer is that they want to put themselves out of business. I fear that some environmentalists want to remain environmentalists. Personally, I could find something else to do.

Sincerely,

Matthew Haun

Salt Lake City

Jim,

The first time I almost almost went to Moab was in the summer of 1986, whenI was wandering around the west in my brand-new Mazda 323, the first car I ever owned that I trusted to get me further west than the flint hills of Kansas. Before that I relied on hitchiking and bus rides for my annual pilgrimage beyond the hundredth meridian, both modes of transit which led to frequent adventures with parole-jumpers and perverts, not entirely unwelcome but unnerving enough to generally motivate me to reach the end of the road (any road) as quickly as possible and strike out with my back to the rest of humanity.

Anyway, on this trip me and my little car were enjoying the road for its own sake (ah, the love-hate relationship with blacktop - a topic for another letter) and I found myself gassing up in Crescent Junction, at dusk. I don't remember much except the gas pumps were still old-fashioned, with the flourescent lights on curved posts over the pumps, and the Chinese Elms were sighing in the breeze. It was a junction, so I was trying to decide which way to go, considering heading up to Salt Lake, where I'd never been, or Moab, which I'd never heard of. There were a couple of other guys there getting gas, with plates from further east than mine. They said they'd just come from Moab, and there was nothing there. I don't know what I could have been thinking, but I took the other and drove almost all the way to Evanston that night.

It was three years later when I finally wandered into the canyon country, by way of the Weminuche Wilderness, stopping over at the Needles District for awhile, moseying around, then making my way in to Moab and its surrounds. My paltry prose cannot capture my reaction to it all, and all I can say is I haven't been the same person since. Within a couple years, I started graduate school at USU, living 30 miles west of Logan in a 1966 Marlette single-wide (another love-hate story), enjoying the view of our alfalfa field and the cattle grazing the Bear River bottoms below.

Visits to southeast Utah were frequent, mostly just wandering, but also on the federal dime a few times, interviewing public health workers and their clients, Old Westerners as you call them, as part of a university research project. In Logan and smaller communities nearby, training to become a psychologist, getting to know colleagues and clients, Mormons, heathens, and everything in between. Being blessed and fortunate with a wonderful wife, becoming an in-law among the Dine' and both of us finally returning to the Reservation to work. Old Westerners, New Westerners, students, visitors, and descendants of the original inhabitants. I've tried to be a good listener among them all.

Most regular people know there is something wrong, maybe they don't know what it is but they look for answers anyway. Some people, both Old and New Westerners, find answers on a personal level and carve out a good life for themselves and their families, without being seduced by corporate brainwashing or ideological extremism. Many more are subjugated or manipulated by these tools of the tiny group of the wealthiest ruling elite Americans. How do we find our answers to this juggernaut, and take them beyond the personal level to the community level, the regional level, and beyond? I don't know myself, and one thing I've always appreciated about your stance, dear editor, is that you don't purport to know either. But you just may have something with this MAHBU idea. The Dalai Lama said, "Dialogue among people is necessary to promote trust. It leads to better understanding and to peace and harmony." If we were just to all start talking and listening to one another, they might call it a movement. Count me in.

Christopher Morris Shiprock, New Mexico

Jim-

In regards to MAHBU, thanks a lot. The West and its Anglo inhabitants have always engaged in half-truths and inconsistencies, to the detriment of the landscapes itself. From the paranoia that lead to the testing of hundreds of nuclear weapons next door to the volatile and acerbic barbs thrown indiscriminately by our favorite land-issues groups. I used to call them public interest groups, but they have taken the public out of their discourse, since in face to face meetings, they would likely never use the terms and epithets they so freely launch at each other in print and e-mail alerts, especially if they first sat down and discussed their shared values as other members of the public do when discussing their concerns. The refusal to tell the truth to one another has hampered our ability as Westerners to move from settlement to civilization with any consensus, plan or regard for our neighbors. Communication among those with differing values stops as soon as one participant attacks another’s value or point of view. We will be forced to re-learn this lesson time and time again, at the expense of losing control over the fate of our landscapes to judicial decrees or the whims of revolving presidential administrations. The solution lies in part in accepting competing points of view as a part of the human landscape, not just tolerating them.

This is not to say that we have to roll over and capitulate to all the demands of those who we disagree with in regards to land use, accessibility and recreation. But when we first recognize and identify an inherent need for solitude as a restorative for our over-stimulated minds, for example, we can then move onto discussion of how best to manage and access the lands that provide such opportunities on a level that leaves the name-calling and devaluation of opinions behind in favor of real discourse and alternatives to the current Gordian Knot that we are trying to unwind that is the future of life, livelihoods and communities in the New West. Thanks for writing what I have thought so many times in the last few years. My only wish is that more people would adopt this MAHBU-stic approach to life in the West.

Cheers-

Adam Shaw

Dear Jim:

I thought your article about MAHBU was excellent and reflects a position I have taken for the past several years. I consider myself an ""environmentalist"" but I have a problem with the fact that so many of us are very quick to point the finger of blame at the opposition without accepting responsibility for our own part in the environmental problems.

I believe that consumption is the biggest contributor to our environmental problems and, like it or not, money equals consumption. As citizens of a country with the highest standard of living in the world, we are all guilty of contributing to the degradation of our environment and the more money one has, the more one consumes. Many pairs of skiis, kayaks, roomfuls of climbing and backpacking gear, multiple mountain or road bikes, gas guzzling sport utility vehicles, the newest and latest in outdoor apparel, a home filled with Pottery Barn furnishings, second homes or condos, are integral components of the environmental issues we face. Unless environmentalists start admitting their part in the problem, no one with opposing viewpoints will ever listen and why should they? Sign me up for your organization!

Kathie Rivers

Dear Jim,

The time has come at long last to put my money where my mouth is. With the imminent disappearance of Wildflower Magazine and the shrinking of Wild Earth Magazine, there's very little left of my own personal periodicals universe save The Zephyr. And if The Zephyr should blow away in a Utah dust-storm, it won't be because I failed to give ŠŠ. $99.99! So here's my check and my picture (it's 2 years old, but what the hell, I've shaved since and got a smaller pair of spectacles, big deal).

Please also sign me up as a heathen member of "Mormons & Heathens for a Better Utah". My father has mentioned to me, on more than one occasion, that Utah is the only place a Jew can be a Gentile. This is not, of course, why I have frequented Utah over the years, but the thought has never failed to amuse me. As a Gentile Heathen, I would like to voice my support for the Zephyr, as opposed to writing a check to do so (see paragraph 1).

Regarding the issues of concern to MAHBU, I think you have identified the ultimate cause-of-it-all in a small advertisement box demonstrating that the population of the United States has tripled over the course of the last twenty years. Not only that, but in those twenty years, some insidious developments occurred: the invention of the ATV and the Mountain Bike.

When I first visited Moab in 1981, nobody had ever heard of a mountain bike. ATVs did not exist either. There were, however, old-fashioned jeep things around which no recreation juggernaut existed. Rock-climbing was an esoteric sport pursued by only a few ardent enthusiasts. Snowmobiles were stinky machines used by ranchers to herd wayward livestock in Wyoming's snowy ranch country. The wide open west, however impacted, was still pretty wide, still pretty open. It was, in essence, an innocent time, the 'good old days' in many respects. Without having ever heard of Moab before, I drove right up to Arches park, signed up for a campsite and took a hike in Devil's Garden. There was a little dirt-packed parking lot at the trailhead and maybe six parked cars. How times have changed. Later on, when I despaired of the growing crowds, I started exploring dirt roads for campsites.

Without ever having established a brand new car-camping campsite, always using an established site that somebody else had earlier pioneered, my original campsites are now BLM revegetation sites. I've had to go farther and farther afield to locate the solitude that was once so easy to acquire. Of course, you can only go so far before you come back full-circle to where you started. The outback is only so far out there. My experience is hardly unique. There are simply three times as many people as there used to be and interest in outdoor recreational activity has probably increased a hundred-fold. But the resource remains the same. There are only so many canyons in canyon country, so many mountains in the high country, so many rivers to run. It's not just about our ability to find solitude, though. The environment is suffering and that suffering has long-term effects such as the loss of biodiversity, atmospheric ozone depletion, endemic extinction and environmentally-induced disease. Just as there are only so many canyons to go around, there is only so much fresh water and productive farmland on the face of planet earth and only so much that technology can do to increase production of such resources, despite the ever-growing increase in demand. Obviously there is a population issue to address, but many think that the solutions to these problems are not about population numbers, but rather about consumption patterns.

Consumption patterns are, indeed, problematic. If every human being on the planet consumed at the rate we Americans do, the ecological collapse would happen tomorrow. Even if we continue to conserve and reduce consumption, the numbers of consumers keeps growing. At the current rate of growth, our sheer numbers will always out-strip any improvement in conservation.

I'll be the first to admit that I access the outdoors environment via an automobile. I participate in modern society and use computers, televisions, guitar amplifiers, backpack stoves, compact disc players, lawn-mower and, yes, automobiles. How long would it take me to walk from Boulder, Colorado to Moab, Utah anyway? We human animals love our technologies. So much so, in fact, that, as a collective, we are depending on technology to solve our problems for us. But technology's ability to keep up with the growth of human numbers has already been superseded by those very numbers. We can conserve resources, reduce consumption and pollution, doing all those environmentally correct things that we know are ethically responsible, yet we're playing a losing hand if we fail to tackle the population issue.

If we could but reduce the population, we wouldn't need technology to solve our conundrums for us. We could keep our technologies, as damaging as they might be, if only we reduced our numbers to a level that recognized the carrying capacity of the environment for human beings and their industrial culture. As scientist Al Bartlett has often asked, is there a single environmental problem that wouldn't be that much closer to solution if human numbers were reduced?

Same thing goes for the canyon country. There's just too many dad-blamed homo sapiens littering the landscape! If this opinion makes me a misanthrope, sign me,

Evan Cantor

Boulder, CO

REMEMBERING THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Jim Stiles-

Just received the April/May edition of the Zephyr and experienced a sudden attack of nostalgia for Moab and the high desert country. My late in-laws, Ray and Ethel Scovil, were long time denizens of the area years ago. They owned the Porcupine Ranch. (Don’’t know what it’’s called now.) To get there you crossed the river and just before you came into town you took a hard left. You hugged the river for what seemed like forever on a washboard road. Eventually you climbed over a bluff and gazed down into Castle Valley. From that point it was just a few miles through that valley of majestic red rock formations to an old cottonwood tree. It marked the way over an impossible rutted road through National Forest land to a magical little haven we called "the ranch".
Ray Scovil died in Moab in 1972. It was the last time my wife, Sylvia, and I were ever there. We keep promising ourselves that one day we will come back and maybe even visit the old ranch but, we just haven't made it yet. From time to time Sam and Adrien Taylor of the Times Independent were so very kind in sending us a copy of their paper so that we wouldn't lose touch. It did help to preserve memories of Moab, the fantastic countryside and, of course, some of Ray and Ethel's friends. As you may know Ray provided some of the local color back in the daysof the "uranium boom". Among his ventures he included a small restaurant then called "The Red Door". It was situated in an alley off the main drag. I’’m not sure the alley ever had a name. He was both "chef" as well as the local Justice Of The Peace. I remember those precious moments for laughter at someone else’’s expense when Ray was forced to "hold court"in his kitchen. He would be standing in front of a huge tome (the court docket) while busily broiling steaks and fries on the side. He’‘d have a highway cop standing beside him while a totally bewildered driver who’d been cited for speeding would be standing in front of them. I kept thinking, "only in Moab!". One summer John Wayne happened to be filming there and was having dinner at "The Red Door" when a highway cop brought some poor guy he'd cited in for a hearing and sentencing. Ray whipped off his kitchen apron, opened his docket and fined the guy- all in about the time it takes to tell this story. Wayne was so impressed with this example of "frontier justice" that he and Ray became good friends thereafter.

Ah well! I can go on and on! Just wanted to say thanks for the copy of the Zephyr. We still do think of Moab and the role it played in our lives. Best of luck!

Sal and Sylvia Tedesco

THANK YOU JENNIFER SPEERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Jim, I was at Main Street Bagels in Grand Junction and grabbed a copy of The Canyon Country Zephyr to read with my coffee. I read your "Take It or Leave It" column and enjoyed the recap of your 15 years publishing the Zephyr. Your "Top 10 High Points" were an interesting and amusing commentary of how Moab and the environmental battles have changed over the years. My husband and I first encountered Moab during the summer of 1970 when it was the nearest "civilization" to a field camp we were living in at Circle Cliffs, four hours away (Hanksville was closer to us, but was not civilized at all - although it was very interesting.). That summer the Redrock Country burned itself into our very souls, so when we retired in 1996 we chose to be near it in Grand Junction. That brings me to Jennifer Speers. Several years ago my husband and I were driving to Moab on Utah 128, one of the prettiest drives in the country, when we happened upon the abomination of development at Dewey Bridge. We were stunned that expensive homes were going to be plopped into this very scenic and historic valley. Once the first house was erected we felt all was lost. We just didn't know what to do and assumed that people in Utah had either not attempted to stop the development or had lost the battle.

When I read #10 in your list of "Top 10 High Points" I could hardly believe what Jennifer Speers had done. I had become completely cynical that today's wealthy Americans would ever realize their responsibilities to those of us who helped create their wealth in the first place. In my book "weasel" is an excellent term for people such as Ken Lay and his ilk. After all, how many homes are necessary (he was reported to have 6)? He and other rich weasels like him never seem to know when they have "enough". So when I learned that Jennifer Speers had purchased all the lots in the subdivision and had torn down the house that had been built, I was ecstatic and astonished. To also buy the Proudfoot Bend Ranch so cows rather than condos would be on the land was truly wonderful. I look forward to driving down to Moab and seeing NOTHING on the subdivision property.

If there is any way you can extend my thanks to this remarkable woman I hope you will do so. She may be wealthy, but she is definitely not a weasel. I hope her actions will be publicised widely as an example of the sort of things other wealthy people should be doing.

Best Wishes for another interesting 15 years of publishing the Zephyr.

Sandra Hood

Grand Jct, CO