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…
There’s little doubt that we live today in interesting times. In recent months, Americans have been confronted with deep, seemingly insurmountable problems. Divisions among neighbors and families. The pain of economic loss and the specter of illness and death. We’ve…
I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if…
The main thing to remember about capitalism is that companies will always try to make you feel better about buying their product. It’s easy to be seduced by advertising—believing that buying one type of soda pop makes you a better…
It is a very quiet morning here in Moab, Utah. Outside a gentle rain is falling, the first we have seen in a few weeks. All month the weather in our part of the world has been mild, with…
INTRODUCTION: When President Obama visited Hiroshima last May and laid a wreath at the Peace Memorial there, my mind flashed back to an evening more than 25 years ago, during a pack trip into Dark Canyon with Ken Sleight. It…
In December 1989, my friend Ed McCarrick recounted his World War II experiences with me in a recorded interview. December 7, 1941 I was in a store in Newark, N.J. buying candy when the news of Pearl Harbor came across…
My first decade (1929-1939) was spent growing up in Idaho. My second decade of life (1940-1949) was set in Utah. Incidences, experiences, environment, and heritage all shape one’s life, and so, pardon me as l divert a bit from…
Georgie Clark is single-minded. “The Colorado River is my life, always has been,” she says in a high, squeaky twang. “The Grand Canyon is my home. Forty-eight years now.” Her eagle-like eyes blaze. Year after year, May through September, Georgie…