Once again I reminisce and search my memory of past years and lay down a few meandering thoughts. The eventful Sixties surely stand out in my mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s book Nature became the bible of his own era’s Cultural…
At twenty-one years of age, in 1950, I went through a hellish year, as national and international events seemed to pull me into areas in which I had little control. Distractions were many. Continuous war talk left my mind immobilized,…
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…
EDITOR’S NOTE: For years, Ken Sleight was a regular columnist for this publication and his topics scanned the spectrum—from his passionate quixotic quest to restore Glen Canyon, to his opposition to nuclear waste in San Juan County. Ken also took…
Note: This article first appeared in the June/July 2010 Zephyr. It’s almost looking like Spring at Pack Creek Ranch. The lawns are greening up. The horses are looking like they’re feeling their oats after a long hard winter. Splashes of…
“The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life. Soon there will be no wilderness. Soon there will be no place to go. Then the madness becomes universal… and the universe goes mad.” Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang…
As the Bears Ears debate heated up last summer, monument proponents revealed sentiments that went far beyond support for a presidential proclamation. Again and again, the argument included a near unanimous loathing for the Rural West, especially the many small…
The Zephyr has been posting the remarkable photographs of Edna Fridley for many years. As some of you might recall, Edna’s daughter Marti gave Edna’s entire collection of color slides and journals to The Zephyr in the late 1990s. Her images cover the entire Colorado Plateau, including trips down Glen Canyon before it was flooded by Lake Powell. She became a close friend of legendary river runners, Harry Aleson and Ken Sleight.
But Edna wandered everywhere and she was especially fond of visiting the Navajo Nation. Year after year she took journeys from her home in Brigham City, Utah to iconic landmarks like Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly. She loved to attend the Navajo Rodeo at Coal Canyon and often attended the Inter Tribal Celebrations that are still held every summer in Gallup, New Mexico. I have many images of those experiences as well, but will save those photos for another time.
Here are some of Edna’s best Kodachrome transparencies of Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly. Enjoy a ride back in time with Edna Fridley…
For decades, the iconic routed wooden signs, in national parks across America, were a familiar sight to tourists. They were works of art…
But leave it to the government to find one. Someone in the Department of Transportation, his/her identity lost to history, decided to take a look at the park signs and saw red flags everywhere…
“These signs! These signs are NOT in compliance with federal highway safety standards!!!”
If you didn’t live through the 1950s, there’s a commonly held but false impression that ‘nothing happened’ during the decade… But the decade of the ‘50s initiated the groundwork, literally, for what was to come. After a decade of the Great Depression and four years of world war. Growth was inevitable, but the explosive growth was stunning…
In order for the arid Southwest to grow far beyond anything that could be called “sustainable,” proponents needed two rare commodities for the arid deserts — water and power. Projects like Glen Canyon Dam and the Powell Reservoir were planned and built with that goal in mind.
Damn sustainability…full speed AHEAD.