Notes from Westwater
“That’s a cool pouch.” I gestured toward a leather bag hanging around the neck of a tall mountain man.
He and his friend, Tailgunner, had just walked up the embankment from their camp.
As I snapped their photographs, they turned around, joking about their most photogenic side.
They were dressed in...
Ted, Kenidee, and I walked through the Old Carney Cemetery in southern Missouri with the sun beating down on us.
The heavy humidity made it feel like we were swimming upstream. Sweat prickled along my back and dampened my forehead.
The cemetery was small; no building housed an index of the plots;...
Our mountains were burning, and Monticello residents had been notified to be ready to evacuate if necessary.
Except for our prayers Ted and I were powerless to help, so we decided to do an overnighter in Flagstaff to escape the smoke and heat.
On the way there, we wanted to see White Mesa Arch on...
On June 27, in Washington City, UT, I received a text from a friend in Illinois: “How is the Babylon fire affecting you? (Besides breaking your heart.)”
She sent a series of photos showing huge plumes of smoke rising from Elk Ridge, one looking like an atomic bomb had gone off.
Our son in Missouri...
A papercutting/painting by Ada Rigby hangs above my desk. Ada was a renowned paper artist, and in this piece, she cut Elk Ridge out of blue paper and snipped pines, firs, deciduous trees, and bushes out of black paper, gluing them in front of the Ridge.
Then, she painted an orange sun setting...
Etched on a glass panel are the words: “Within the lives of Southern Paiutes, there is an inherent understanding that all things are placed on this land with the breath of life, just as humans.
“This land is considered to be their home, just as it is for man, and it is taught that one must consider...
We stood on the edge of Road Canyon on Cedar Mesa, peering down at the bottom. It was mid-April, and the brilliant claret cup cacti were blooming.
The short-cut to the Seven Kivas Ruin didn’t boast an official trail, but rock cairns marked the way. I’m not sure why, but I feared I would die on this...
Years ago, my older brother, born and raised in Kansas, decided he wanted to move his family to a cohesive Latter-day Saint town in Utah.
He looked at a Utah map and decided that either St. George or Blanding would fit the bill. Whichever town offered him a job first, he said, that’s where they’d...
Death Valley, according to the official pamphlet, is the hottest place on earth with the highest temperature recorded on July 10, 1913 at 134 degrees Fahrenheit.
It’s also the lowest place in North America at Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level, as well as the dryest, receiving an average of 2...
I came around a two-story ruin of a bank in Candelaria, NV, a mining ghost town, and was startled to find Ted in conversation with a man who had his hands full of treasures.
“I’ve been to other ghost towns,” he said, “but I’ve never seen so much trash.”
He showed us fragments of dishes, nails, and...
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