A MONUMENTAL DIVIDE

Jon Jarvis was director of the National Park Service during President Obama's tenure. ( Some of this has appeared in the Canyon Country Zephyr .) ( UPDATE September 1: On the road back from Monument Valley I stopped in at Friends of Cedar Mesa's Bears Ears Education Center in Bluff, home base of the nonprofit. Its mission, at least overtly,  is to tell people looting and vandalism of archeological artifacts is a bad thing. But I came away with a clearer sense of how difficult it will be to bring together opposing sides in the monument hoo-haw. I asked one of the volunteers there why the facility was not closer to places people have to drive through to get to Bears Ears country – like Monticello or Blanding. It’s about 100 miles out of the way en route from the north to a popular rock climbing site within the monument, Indian Creek. She said the Mormons would just burn down the building if located in either town. Really? Bigotry  sometimes bubbles up in strange place...

  Kedric “Ked” Somerville an d Boden “Bode” Carpenter (Photos: Brooke Pehrson, Brooke Pehrson Photography ) From photographer Brooke Pehrson: I took these this past June. They were taken out on Ked's property by his barns in Monticello, but they cowboy all over the place.  My own thoughts and feeling behind them? I value the old cowboys. They know how to work.  They know what real struggle is. They’ve stuck to something hard and tiring. These traits are things this generation is losing. Look at the old cowboys' hands, the life they’ve led, the hard work they’ve seen. Not everyone can do this kind of work. I love that Ked is passing these things onto Boden. If we had more "Keds" in this world to patiently teach and show their way of life. The '"stick to it and work hard" type of life, how much better off would we be? ______________ EXCERPTS from "The Horseman's Protege" by Marjorie Haun . Published in the fall 2019 edition...

“Battle Over Bears Ears” is a one-hour documentary produced by KUED in Salt Lake City. According to the station’s website, it “explores the deep connections to place and the vast cultural divides that are fueling the fight over how the Bears Ears Monument is protected and managed. Whose voices are heard, whose are lost, and how do all sides find common ground in this uncommon place?” Watch the trailer here . The film was produced by Nancy Green, who specializes in documentaries for local, regional and national PBS broadcast. Her work at KUED spans nearly 25 years, focusing on diverse topics, including health care, the arts, history and the outdoors. Recent films include “Homeless at the End,” “Search and Rescue,” “The Utah Bucket List,” “Maynard Dixon to the Desert Again” and “On the Edge: Mental Health in Utah.”   ____________   Bill Keshlear and Nancy Green discuss "Battle Over Bears Ears." (Brandon Hill)     BILL KESHLEAR: Tha...

From Bill Boyle, editor of the San Juan Record: "The roosters at the Tribune would like to take credit for the sun coming up in the morning – 18 months after the sunrise!"   The Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper thought it was breaking ground in reporting money San Juan County spent to lobby for President Trump's version of Bears Ears National Monument. It’s old news. Read the SJR here and here . "Legal fees paid by San Juan County is an important story and is familiar to readers of the San Juan Record," according to Boyle.

Jim Stiles has been editor of the Canyon Country Zephyr for 30 years. UPDATE: Portions of this were published as an op-ed in a print edition of The Salt Lake Tribune; it never appeared online. In 2019, when this was originally published, Stiles' Canyon Country Zephyr went live six times a years with fresh stuff. Its current online presence is here . I was a contributor to the publication for several years.  Stiles practiced the kind of "point-of-view" environmental journalism expressed by novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer Wendell Berry: "… this is what is wrong with the conservation movement. ... To the conservation movement, it is only production that causes environmental degradation; the consumption that supports the production is rarely acknowledged to be at fault. The ideal of the run-of-the-mill conservationist is to impose restraints upon production without limiting consumption or burdening the consciences ...