The kid — male, age 16-25, stupid — was about nine feet up a sandstone fin, within sight of his campsite at the Devils Garden. He (I’ll call him Bobby) had been showing off for his girlfriend, eager to thrill…
In my limited understanding, in many Native American cultures, sense of place, and ones relation to the land they have been raised on, is considered down right spiritual. And while it is a subject I’m keen to learn more about,…
This is Hank Schmidt’s Monthly Report from June of 1940. He’d been the park custodian at Arches National Monument since the Fall of 1939. What a difference between 1940 and now… Click Here to Read HANK SCHMIDT’S MONTHLY REPORT: Arches…
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…
NOTE: In the early years of The Zephyr, Moab was transforming itself, though not everyone was sure just who the ‘transformers’ were. We set out to ask the citizens of Moab and Grand County what they saw coming. Here is…
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”…
This is what’s happened between blinks of the eye…. Shortly after The Zephyr’s first issue appeared on newsstands, in mid-March 1989, I was at the old Main Street Broiler, eating one of Debbie Rappe’s wonderful cheeseburgers and overheard a spirited…
You’re either a person who can sit still or a person who can’t. A person who loves what you can already see, or one who wonders what you might see around the bend. Probably the former type lives the more…
In The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith suggests that the field of Economics has not sufficiently evolved to account for widespread material abundance, which is itself a recent condition anywhere in the world. Galbraith argues that the affluent society is…
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… I’m going to grab a coffee now, then just get on I-95…
It can be problematic writing about how we grew-up, about people we met in our younger days, and about those places that meant something to us. Essentially, many of us believe we are not capable of objectivity when reflecting upon…
“The Devils Garden Overlord & Cactus Ed” (photos by the author except where noted) Author’s Note: For more than three years , I have spent most of my keyboard time writing “informational/investigative” long form articles (some might suggest ‘long-winded’) about excruciatingly…
Early in July 1891 a young scientist from Sweden, Gustaf Nordenskiöld, showed up at the Wetherill family’s Alamo Ranch near Mancos, Colorado and requested that they guide him to Mesa Verde to see the cliff dwellings. This was the beginning…
Rebecca Benally and Rob Miller are civic-minded: Benally, as a Navajo deeply engaged in developing a more prosperous San Juan County, Utah, and preserving her heritage independent of powerful forces beyond the county that, in her opinion, would permanently damage…
Two weeks ago, many of us remembered and commemorated the 30th anniversary of Edward Abbey’s death on March 14, 1989. What would Ed think of our world in 2019? And what would the World think of him? Here are a…
(from the 2008 archives) Note: This is Part one of ‘A Sentimental Tour.’ It was first written in 2008 and is re-published here. Look for the sequel or sequels to it in upcoming issues of the Zephyr… The demise of…
As we approached our 30th anniversary, we asked some of our readers how long they’ve been reading The Zephyr and how they first found us. Here are some of the responses. We’d like to add your memories to our list.…
For 20 years, The Zephyr was a print publication. We needed almost $5000 in revenue each issue just to break even. The printing cost alone, for 15,000 copies, was over $2500. Consequently, we had to sell a lot of ads.…
“Let me show you something.” Herb Ringer paused a moment, then pushed his chair slowly away from the table and stood up. He turned and walked down the darkened hallway to the bedroom of his trailer, the same travel trailer…
The Chamber of Commerce calls it “The City Different.” Different from what? Different from the typical American city, the chamber means. But more and more Santa Fe comes to resemble every other city, and not only American cities in general,…
Click Here to Read the Previous Installments of Brave New West (The Comic Strip)… Jim Stiles is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Canyon Country Zephyr. To comment, scroll to the bottom of the page. Don’t forget the Zephyr ads! All…
To comment, scroll to the bottom of the page. Don’t forget the Zephyr ads! All links are hot!
For 30 years, I’ve been cartooning Zephyr readers’ great faces and some of them are featured more prominently on another post in this anniversary issue. Many of them were from Moab and Grand County but many more extended beyond Southeast…
