“The problem with the conservation movement is that it has clear conscience.” — Wendell Berry. DISCLAIMER: This story makes no attempt to offer ‘solutions’, nor do I have any illusions, when considering the Future of Moab, Utah. I am simply…
24 October, 2018 It is only partially coincidental that in this past week we had municipal elections across the province and a climate change scientist just happened to speak at a public forum in Penticton. There was nothing coincidental, however,…
What’s happening here is happening elsewhere. And what’s coming may be bigger than even we doomsayers would dare predict. Barring a miracle, we are about to enter a new phase, the last phase, in the taming of the West. When…
This is the conclusion of a two-part essay on New West gentrification and the designation of Bears Ears National Monument (part one here). In this part two, I will more closely examine the concrete ways in which New West colonization…
CLICK HERE to READ PREVIOUS EPISODES of BRAVE NEW WEST (The Comic Strip)! Jim Stiles is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Canyon Country Zephyr. To comment, scroll to the bottom of the page. Don’t forget the Zephyr ads! All links…
I have recently learned to remotely keep track of traffic flows at Arches National Park and the Moab area via web cameras at the park entrance and along US 191 as the tourists flow in and out. I’m a Luddite…
Bluff Goes Big The most attention-grabbing fact of the incorporation is its size: 38 square miles, which is more than 60 times the size of Bluff’s present developed footprint. The scale of the new boundary is fairly hard to contextualize,…
2018 PROLOGUE: My worries about housing prices in Moab and my community’s future, back in 1994, seem almost quaint when placed in today’s context. But this was the beginning of the change, the transformation–the transmogrification— that put Moab on a…
It’s a fact that Arches National Park is exploding at the seams. Heavy marketing, an eager Industrial Tourism business community, and a recent return to relatively cheap gasoline prices have all contributed to massive increases in park visitation. Tourists at…
In the late 1990s, as Moab was starting to feel the first pangs of unrestrained growth, I penned a Zephyr article called, “Return to Moab: 2020 AD.” I wrote it mostly for laughs but now, as we approach that once…