Not long ago, a barn that had stood in my Colorado hometown for 90 years was demolished, but not before a land developer tried to purchase it for his new ranch. An old red barn. A wealthy real estate magnate.…
Gold Fever: Redux…by Charles Clayton
MOAB, the ‘TOOT n’ TELL’EM’ & GLOWING in the DARK…by Steve Lonie
I grew up in Portland Oregon, and when I was in the fourth grade, 9 years old (1957), my Dad sprung me for a week to go to, of all places, Moab, Utah. To this day, I do not know…
SAVING SOLITUDE AT GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK: A TALE OF OBSCURITY AND IRONY …by Scott Thompson
The world of light and space that Edward Abbey found at Arches National Monument in the late 1950s and early 1960s and that he wrote about in Desert Solitaire survives in Great Basin National Park in far eastern Nevada. The…
Vlachos’ Views…Photos and Captions by Paul Vlachos
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… 1. There’s a big, slow curve as you come in to Bishop,…
Pointblank: The Landmark We Built …by Dave Jarvis
When I was a little squirt, my family would take holiday trips from Los Alamos to St. George. It was a long day’s drive. Punctuated only by a few gas stops with rushed potty breaks. Dad would burn up the…
The Wilder West: Good, The Bad, and The Frozen…Art by Dave Wilder
The Good, The Bad, and The Frozen Acrylic, 14×20″ Collection of the artist. Cards available on the Wilder Arts website. Dave Wilder’s art can be seen at: http://www.wilderarts.com and at the Laughing Raven Gallery 417 Hull Ave. Jerome, Arizona…
Clinging Hopelessly to the Maps: 1941 Conoco “Touraide” Travel Guide
(Click the images to enlarge) To see the PDF version of this page, click here. Don’t forget the Zephyr ads! All links are hot!
Herb Ringer’s American West: Reno & Fallon, Nevada, 1944 & 2013
DOWNTOWN RENO, 1944 & 2013 (present day ‘reality’ courtesy of Google street view) Fallon, NV HERB RINGER came West from his home in New Jersey in 1939. Camera in hand, Herb captured the American West, from the Canadian Border…
From Tom Till “Then & Now”…Castle Gate & Split Mountain
The Zephyr is honored to present selected images from TOM TILL’s remarkable book, “Then & Now.” Castle Gate, Utah (Click the caption text to enlarge.) Split Mountain Visit Tom Till’s Website. To see the PDF version of this…
(From the Zephyr Archives) Losing Solitude: MOUNTAIN RANGERS AT JACKSON HOLE…by Martin Murie
Note: This article first appeared in the February/March 2006 edition of the Zephyr. At the crest of Teton Pass there used to be a big wooden sign with a black silhouette of a big-hatted cowboy pointing east into the valley.…
The October/November Issue of the Zephyr!
TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT…Jim Stiles ‘Return to Abajo Peak. An Autumn’s View’‘ Searching for Solitude at the Summit‘ SOWING CLOVER…Tonya Stiles ‘Cheap Lives in a Sacred Economy W I N D O W S A c r o s…
Take it or Leave it: RETURN TO ABAJO PEAK, AN AUTUMN’S VIEW…by Jim Stiles
In the blink of an eye, summer has left us. The maples are turning red below South Peak, the aspens are on the cusp. The mornings are cold and crisp. The most poignant and melancholy and lovely time of the…
Sowing Clover: Cheap Lives in a Sacred Economy…by Tonya Morton
It’s a cliché to say that every object has a story. But, when you’re a consummate thrift store and flea market browser, as Jim and I are, the truth is that each of our belongings probably has three or four…
Take it or Leave it: Searching for Silence on the Summit…by Jim Stiles
I made my 28th trip to the top of a nearby mountain last month. But who’s counting? I hadn’t missed a year since 1985, and then my own procrastinations and an early snow storm stymied my efforts to make the…
Sanitizing the Truth: How BIKE Magazine Butchered an Honest Tale of Moab’s Last 20 Years…by Jim Stiles
I am in most ways an un-ambitious writer. Even downright lazy. While I’ve contributed to other magazines and periodicals over the years, and finally threw a book together in 2007, I confine most of my scribbling to The Zephyr. Recently,…
“Oh, for an Insuperable Moab…” by Jim Stiles
NOTE: Bolded passages are those cut out of the final BIKE magazine article. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests…when Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, what room will…
Superstition Land: A Fable of Boundless Water…by Scott Thompson
It is not that Pueblo Indians hate modern America…It is just that our unchecked growth, lack of social cohesion, and flamboyant use of resources worries them as being unsustainable. They expect to outlast us. – David E. Stuart, Archaeologist…
VLACHOS’ VIEWS…Photos and Captions by Paul Vlachos
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… 1. It may not be much, photographically, but this photo has a…
The Bulletin Board of DOOM!
Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground. That is not wild-eyed hippie talk. It is the…
November 22, 1963–50 years ago, in Dallas and Moab…by Jim Stiles
“People will remember today as a day to date things in their lives from, in the same way they did with President Roosevelt. They say, where were you when President Roosevelt died…. they will say the same thing about where…
Herb Ringer’s American West: Herb at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, 1950
Herb Ringer at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, 1950 WRANGLERS…Herb befriended many of the wranglers at the South Rim and was particularly fond of Sherm Eberly, who led trail rides down the Bright Angel Trail for decades. HERB…