In this issue… Take it or Leave it: Robert Redford, Art Ekker, and Our Complicated Love of Cowboys …by Jim Stiles CANDID CAMERA: Facial Recognition and the Last Fight for Privacy… by Tonya Stiles FROM GENOCIDE SURVIVOR TO KING OF…
I have had a soft spot for cowboys and the cinematic Western since I was old enough to walk and say, “giddy-up.” It is one of the great regrets of my life that I never became proficient on a horse.…
“It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.” – Robert Oppenheimer In any given week, any given month…
It’s a story that won’t stop haunting me. A mystery in need of answers. I try to let it go, and then it creeps back in—as all the best stories do. Because the best stories are a kind of haunting.…
NOTE: This is the second in an ‘as needed’ series of photo essays on the changing face of Southeast Utah, as its communities pursue an “Industrial Tourism” economy. In the last issue, Tonya and I ventured into Moab for the…
He will keep the vision as long as he lives. It is simply a signature of God, the universe drawn with light, wholly gratuitous and unexpected…. The boy is here, here in the world, in the embrace of eternity. —N.…
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. – Mike Tyson In modern America, local zoning has become a primary mechanism through which a wide range of hopes and fears for social and economic conditions are hashed…
This article first appeared in the Utah Historical Quarterly, and is reprinted with the permission of the author. Canyonlands National Park, established in 1964, is the largest national park in Utah and was the first new national park formed in…
I’m going to bribe myself to finish this now, so that I can stop beating myself up for NOT finishing it. I don’t know if most people have to work that way, but sometimes that’s what it takes. If I…
When President Obama created “Bears Ears National Monument,” it was an accepted fact that with the designation would come massive development studies, master plans, draft management plans, and ultimately, the approval of multi-million dollar visitor centers, improved roads, and other…
I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. –Jack Kerouac, On the Road And still I look, certain you’ll leave me –Richard Hugo, “Upper Voight’s, To All…
A few months ago, Tonya and I were climbing our favorite mountain in one of the (still) most remote parts of southern Utah. It’s not a technical climb by any means but a steep hike that rises about 2000 feet…
This past Fall, Jim and I took a trip out to Herb Ringer country. We wanted to return to a few of the spots in Nevada and California that held particular importance for Herb, and see how those places had…
John Hendricks is the founder and former CEO of The Discovery Channel. Almost a quarter century ago, he started buying up land near Gateway, Colorado, in order he said, “to save it.” Gateway was a small, bucolic rural wide spot…
“The General Assembly has widely acknowledged that the world’s depletion of natural resources and rapid environmental degradation are the result of unsustainable consumption and production patterns which have led to adverse consequences for both the Earth and the health and…
My buddy Joseph Day, from Second Mesa, Arizona and a longtime Zephyr supporter, likes to torture me from time to time. Last night, Tonya and I were having a quiet evening when an email popped up from Joe. “Have you…
NOTE: This edition of Hank Schmidt’s monthly reports is especially difficult to read. The National park Service operated on a shoestring budget in those days and the park managers were encouraged to conserve whenever possible. Here, Hank must have decided…
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In this issue… Take it or Leave it: “OK BOOMERS?” GOOD LUCK, “DOOMERS:” A Recent History of Generational Fear, Angst and Loathing … by Jim Stiles The Other Lonely Rangers: The Forgotten Lives of America’s Basque Sheepherders… by Tonya Audyn…
Until recently, I was blissfully unaware of the internet’s latest trope/meme/catchphrase. “Okay Boomer” is supposed to be a snarky put-down of my admittedly disgraceful generation by our younger nieces and nephews. For the most part, I couldn’t agree more. But…
It was the trial of the year in Moab, Utah. The courtroom was packed full by Ten in the morning, November 18th of 1921. Tensions had been brewing a long time between the cattlemen of Southeast Utah and the encroaching…
For those of you who have been regular Zephyr readers for years, I don’t need to introduce Herb Ringer to you. Herb’s brilliant, historic photographs of the American West have been a regular feature in The Zephyr for almost as…
We are particular to preserve the buildings, but fear, unless the Gov’t sees proper to make a national park of the Cañons, including Mesa Verde, that the tourists will destroy them. B. K. Wetherill, 1890 Into the silent stone building…
Perhaps light is the first thing that appears when I think of this place, light, the way it textures the world here. True, I see places where I have camped and fished and walked and drank coffee. I see cairns…
