In this issue… Take it or Leave it: FUTURE NEWS! Utah Wilderness Debate, 2039-style… by Jim Stiles The Sanitized World is Here (So Pass Me a Cigarette) … by Tonya Audyn Stiles WHO IS NED MUDD??? … by Jim Stiles…
DATELINE OCTOBER 1, 2039 UTAH WILDERNESS NEWS FROM THE FUTURE! EDITOR’S NOTE: And now, some editorial humor from “the Future!” (a modified version of this story first appeared in The Z several years ago. It has been updated and revised)…
“After twenty-six weeks of sunlight and stars, wind and sky and golden sand, I want to hear once more the crackle of clamshells on the floor of the bar in the Clam Broth House in Hoboken. I long for a…
Almost 30 years ago, not long after I’d started The Zephyr, one of my favorite parts of the paper was the ‘Feedback” section. I always looked forward to the letters—and in those days they really were letters, on real paper,…
Democracies are, by design, competitive and thus often messy….. As voters become increasingly frustrated with a lack of results, they will look to ‘more effective’ strongman models of the type embodied by Russia and China. …At the end of the…
Zephyr readers consistently demonstrate a high degree of insight and engagement. Last issue, for example, Doug Meyer left a response to my column that steered me to a selection of smart essays and other writing about the meaning of big…
South of the Clouds he discovered an insectbiting his handand said this could be the beginningof something. three weeks laterhe diedsomewhere southof the clouds. actuallythis is a poem about drinking tea. Objet d’Art a man found the key to longevity…
Paul Vlachos is a New Yorker who understands The West. And he is a New Yorker who understands New York. Wherever Paul goes, he finds signs of life… When we last convened on this page, I was making insane promises…
They came from the four corners of the continent—from Northern Utah and the Rocky New England coast. From the Jersey Shore and the Texas plains. Four pilgrims pursuing a dream. They found it right here. Doug Travers. Dale Stevens. Ed…
Come along with me then, I’ll take you to a Country where we shall have no need of Money to make us happy, nor Laws to make us wise; our Friendship shall be all our Riches, and Reason our only…
Q. So, how would you describe your music? “My old guru, Fat David, called it, ‘music to execute criminals by.‘” In fact, I invented the goat cheese and chicken skin pizza, extra crust. I heard they still sell like hotcakes…
I woke up early this morning. Early is 3:30 am, this after an 11:30 bedtime. I sometimes hear people talk about how they can’t sleep. I wonder if they mean what I mean when I say that I can’t sleep.…
Almost 40 years ago, I bought some land in San Juan County. The property was part of what had once been an 800 acre ranch. Not long after, I went on a reconnoitering hike and discovered a small wooded side…
First of all, there’s no such thing as objectivity. How you see the world depends on where you stand and who you are. There’s nothing anybody can do about that. So my solution is to tell readers where I stand.…
On August 22, 2019, a town hall-style meeting was held in Mexican Water, Utah. The gathering was open to all citizens of San Juan County and it was attended by the county’s three commissioners, Kenneth Maryboy, Willie Grayeyes and Bruce Adams.…
THIRTY YEARS AGO… These were our fourth and fifth issues of the then-monthly Zephyr and our first election issue. I interviewed both mayoral candidates for the November issue, Bill Meador and the incumbent, Tom Stocks. Even then, the issue of…
I’ve pulled away from following almost all of the non-profit environmental groups and organizations because they have become consumed more about politics and power, rather than actually caring about what happens to Nature. Nature is used these days as a…
This is Hank Schmidt’s Monthly Report from October of 1940. He’d been the park custodian at Arches National Monument for roughly a year. Click Here to Read HANK SCHMIDT’S MONTHLY REPORT: Arches National Monument, June 1940 Click Here to Read…
HERB RINGER and his parents, Sadie and Joseph, traveled across the American West and into the Canadian Rockies on numerous trips, from 1941 to 1973. We are in the process of scanning hundreds of Herb’s Kodachrome transparencies that have never…
This is the second batch of documents from The Zephyr’s 2018 FOIA request to the Bureau of Land Management. The request for documents related to the May 10, 2014 “Recapture Canyon “Protest” that led eventually to the indictment and conviction…
This is the second batch of documents from The Zephyr’s 2018 FOIA request to the Bureau of Land Management. The request for documents related to the May 10, 2014 “Recapture Canyon “Protest” that led eventually to the indictment and conviction…
The Zephyr Backbone is what keeps us alive! Click Here to Join! *Note: The Cartoonist screwed up in Feb/March. In a subconscious attempt to escape the world’s news, he changed one of our Backbone Member’s names from “Michael” to “Richard”…
Take it or Leave it: IN SEARCH OF DOCUMENTS—MY BLM/FOIA “RECAPTURE CANYON” REQUEST …by Jim Stiles Edward Abbey Needs No Defense: A Response to Amy Irvine’s “Desert Cabal”… by Tonya Audyn Stiles The Slovenly Wilderness… by Stacy Young The Open…
Over a year ago, on May 14, 2018, I filed a “Freedom of Information Act” request (FOIA) with the Bureau of Land Management. I was interested in obtaining public documents related to the controversial “Recapture Canyon Protest Ride” on May…
