Few readers of The Monkey Wrench Gang know that Bonnie Abbzug was based on a real woman–a real dancer from the Bronx. She and Ed were a couple when Ed began writing the book and they remained friends until his…
NOTE: I finished this article several weeks ago, before the current COVID-19 disaster gave new urgency and recognition to the term “essential personnel.” It’s clear to everyone now how great a role is played by grocery workers, truckers, gas station…
As Bill Davis and I chatted about his new column, one name dominated our thoughts more than any other. Sam Taylor, the longtime publisher of the Moab Times-Independent, hired Bill in 1978. Though their politics could not have been more…
Today, the rural west veers between two economic extremes: The industrial resource extraction and commodity economy, and the industrial tourism economy. The traditional occupations of the west, ranching, farming, logging, and mining, are locked in a deadly embrace with global…
“The world has gone mad today And good’s bad today, And black’s white today, And day’s night today, And that gent today You gave a cent today Once had several chateaux.” I sometimes think of happier times. What is “happy,”…
This article first appeared in the Utah Historical Quarterly, and is reprinted with the permission of the author. Click Here to Read Part 1… [Bates] Wilson had originally conceived a Canyonlands in which access would be substantially by jeep and…
The fire was now burning brightly. We sat down around Grandfather as the firelight played over his face and white hair. We could hear the wind blowing outside, but everything was peaceful inside the hogan and we were all contented.…
My grandfather, Hayden, was a soft-spoken Baptist who grew up in south Texas during a period when converts were taken to a muddy creek and, well, dunked “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”…
I woke up today and made a cup of tea. It’s a little after 4:30 AM when I do this. It’s dark outside, but I look anyway. In another couple of months the sun will be shining through my kitchen…
NOTE: In the last issue of the Zephyr, Jen Jackson Quintano illuminated some of the mystery around Moab’s “King of the World,” Aharon Andrikian, a drifting artist who found his way to the area in the mid-30s and left his…
Over the past three decades, The Canyon Country Zephyr has published some of the best writing, photography and history of the American West … And politics, from time to time. Now we’re taking a break from politics, as we all…
The Zephyr Backbone is what keeps us alive! Click Here to Join! Click Here to Join the Zephyr Backbone!
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…