One of my favorite poet/songwriters, Utah Phillips, once wrote: “I’ll sing about an emptiness the East has never known, Where coyotes don’t pay taxes and a man can live alone. And you’ve got to walk forever just to find a…
Everyone was expecting another typical Moab Spring. A year earlier it had looked like this… and then… For weeks, Moab looked like this. A post-apocalyptic ghost town. Moab local Kerry Lange took these two shots from a spot on Main…
My grandfather, Hayden, was a soft-spoken Baptist who grew up in south Texas during a period when converts were taken to a muddy creek and, well, dunked “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”…
When President Obama created “Bears Ears National Monument,” it was an accepted fact that with the designation would come massive development studies, master plans, draft management plans, and ultimately, the approval of multi-million dollar visitor centers, improved roads, and other…
My buddy Joseph Day, from Second Mesa, Arizona and a longtime Zephyr supporter, likes to torture me from time to time. Last night, Tonya and I were having a quiet evening when an email popped up from Joe. “Have you…
I first visited Moab in the brutally cold January of 1973. I returned the following summer, then again and again. And in the fall of 1975 I moved there to stay. It was an early seminal moment…Moab, I proclaimed, would…
“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…
NOTE: In the early years of The Zephyr, Moab was transforming itself, though not everyone was sure just who the ‘transformers’ were. We set out to ask the citizens of Moab and Grand County what they saw coming. Here is…
PROLOGUE: For the past several years San Juan County, Utah and its citizens, especially the white Mormon residents of Blanding and Monticello, have been the subject of much scrutiny. From local media attacks to national coverage, many of the county’s…
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…