In this issue… Take it or Leave it: A SIGN OF CIVILITY in a WORLD GONE MAD …by Jim Stiles Sowing Clover: The Stranger …by Tonya Audyn Stiles “Lonely are the Brave” Revisited (Part Two) …by Jim Stiles Grippo: Blackout…
“With all its hopes, dreams, promises and urban renewals, the world continues to deteriorate…give up.” “Deteriorata.” National Lampoon. 1972 So a couple months ago, when I heard that for the first time in recorded history, TWO tropical storms were simultaneously…
When I lived in South Dakota, one of my favorite places was a truck stop on the western edge of Rapid City. There wasn’t anything particularly special about this truck stop—except…maybe, for the quality of the pie in its diner.…
NOTE: If you haven’t seen “Lonely Are the Brave,” or read Edward Abbey’s “Brave Cowboy,” you might be better served to find the film or the book, watch and/or read them, and then come back to this article…JS Six years ago,…
What do you do when reality is too much to handle? Geddes woke up in a strange room. It was clearly a motel room. There were two beds, a TV, a bathroom done up in tile and fixtures from the…
Tonya and I live in what is nowadays one of the most remote parts of the country. The High Plains are not known for their scenic splendor (though they are scenic to the discerning eye) and tourist traffic is next…
There’s a stretch of tricky water dead ahead of us. I have to row like hell to gain access to the faster water inside the river’s bend, the main channel. I’m navigating through Eight-foot Rapid on Utah’s San Juan River…
It was around the first of October that the leaves on the birch trees began to blow away. I looked out of the window one morning and saw that leaves had gathered at the side of the road. I saw…
What’s the biggest mistake you ever made? No, not that kind; I mean work related. If you’ve reached A Certain Age, you might even have trouble picking the one. Not me; mine shines out like a beacon against the…
“We had spent one night at Kayenta. No one could be even that short a time in the Wetherills’ house, hearing them talk, seeing the beautiful things hanging on their walls, without catching some of the riches to be found…
Pahaana, that’s the Hopi word for white Americans of European ancestry, white folks, and that’s me. Being one of the few Pahaanas married to a Hopi woman and practicing the ancient Hopi custom of living at your wife’s place means…
I like loneliness and the solitude of fishing – of getting away from crowds – to escape our world and into that of another. I am a naturally anxious person. A person whose mind swells with “what if’s” at every…
Everyone was expecting another typical Moab Spring. A year earlier it had looked like this… and then… For weeks, Moab looked like this. A post-apocalyptic ghost town. Moab local Kerry Lange took these two shots from a spot on Main…
Note: this article first appeared in the October/November 1999 Zephyr… When the Sierra Club council, years ago, turned its back on Glen Canyon and essentially permitted the building of the Glen Canyon dam, I was stunned and bitter beyond belief.…
Tonya and I have been together for more than a decade now. Being married has brought me more happiness than I deserve but it’s also been revelatory. I was a bachelor for most of my life and apparently, according to my…
January 22, 1942 By Henry G Schmidt, Custodian Moab, Utah Travel this month, 63; Travel year to date, 625 Weather The new year of 1942 brought us zero temperatures and cold winds, lasting for 6 days and an abrupt change…
Our regular readers know that we began a new project at the Zephyr in the past year–called “Zephyr America.” We’ve been slowly wading through the massive Zephyr archives of historic photos and digitizing them to share with our readers. To…
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In this issue… Take it or Leave it: A Few Words About Justin Farrell and ” Billionaire Wilderness” …by Jim Stiles Finding Peace at Yosemite, Part Two: Ansel Adams and WWII’s Wounded Soldiers …by Tonya Audyn Stiles An Excerpt from…
Back in June, a friend sent me a link to a new book that he thought might interest me. It was called Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy & the Remaking of the American West. I was able to access a brief introduction…
Author’s Note: Last issue, we published “Part One” of this two-part essay. Part One provided the backstory for a very particular time and a place–Yosemite Valley at Christmas, 1943. Photographer Ansel Adams lived and worked in the Valley, and he…