NOTE: Often, living in the year 2016, in these gruesome and depressing times, is more than I can endure. I long to be more than just ‘somewhere else.’ It’s not a matter of where as it is ‘when.’ To be…
EDITORS NOTE: Last year, the enormous Memorial Day crowds trying to visit Arches National Park finally ovewrwhelmed the place. Parking at the Devils Garden and at Delicate Arch overflowed—there was literally no place to park. Lines of vehicles outside the…
FIRST…SOME BATES WILSON STORIES… I came to Moab and became a seasonal ranger at Arches just a couple of years after Bates Wilson retired from the National Park Service, so I never had the chance to work for him. But…
Recently, the Utah Wildlife Board proposed a hunting season for crows. While they are not particularly tasty and are known for their intelligence, crows have often been blamed by farmers for agricultural losses via crop damage—crows have to eat, after…
The golden light of October cottonwoods in the canyons was as I remembered. The year was 2002, and I had returned to the Utah canyon country for a rendezvous with a crowd of friends. We had been rangers together during…
The first time I met Jeff Woods of Swansea, Wales, I was a ranger at Arches National Park. Most of the time I worked out of the Devils Garden, 18 miles inside the park. But today, I’d been called down…
Arches National Monument was created on April 12, 1929, when President Hoover affixed his signature to an official proclamation. Since then the size, status, and popularity of Arches has increased drastically, from a meager 5,000 acres then, to over 70,000…
When I was a seasonal ranger, I lived at the Devils Garden Campground at Arches National Park for a full decade. Some people thought I’d never leave; even I wondered if I’d ever get out of there alive. I worried…
NOTE: The Zephyr recently received a DVD of a 1949 documentary film by Ray Garner. The film is silent; Mr. Garner exhibited this film to audiences around the country and provided ‘live’ narration. The film is now in the public…
In the summer of 1940, Toots McDougald was a blissfully married young woman, living at the end of the world. When Dick Wright asked her to the Junior Prom in 1932, she fell instantly and forever in love. They’d both…
