Progress on Bears Ears National Monument

Important news was announced this week that will build on the future of Bears Ears National Monument.  The BLM and Forest Service have signed an Inter-Governmental Cooperative Agreement with the five Tribes of the Bears Ears Commission to establish a cooperative arrangement to manage the monument.  It is the first time the government has established a formal process for working with Native American Tribes to manage public lands.

Established in 2016 by Presidential Proclamation from President Barack Obama, the monument was the result of lobbying by Native American Tribes and the environmental community as a way to protect a threatened region of important cultural heritage and paleontological resources.  A year later, Donald Trump unilaterally downsized it by 85 percent even without legal authority to do so.  President Joe Biden restored the full extent of the monument (including acreage not included in the original proclamation but added by Trump) in 2021.

Carleton Bowekaty, Lieutenant Governor of Zuni Pueblo, stated, "Today, instead of being removed from a landscape to make way for a public park, we are being invited back to our ancestral homelands to help repair them.  Mark Maryboy of the Utah Dine Bikeyah greeted representatives of the five Tribes as they came together in Bears Ears with a simple message: "Welcome home."

You can read more about this historic agreement here.

Alternative Theory of Pictograph Panels

I received an interesting email today from Wayne Raymond, one of the people who reviewed an early draft of my manuscript for The Slickrock Desert.  Wayne provided excellent feedback that helped make it a better book.  He was particularly interested in my stories about pictographs and petroglyphs, including a photo I had taken of a series of figures of what are known as the Barrier Canyon style of pictographs on a wall in Sego Canyon.

   In my book, I had referred to Polly Schaafsma, an expert on these figures who believes them to be as much as three thousand years old.  I had mentioned that while the meaning of these pictographs is subject to debate, archaeologists generally think the figures with large heads and empty eye sockets may represent the dead, and that they have no arms or legs because they are wrapped in funeral blankets. 

   Wayne sent me a link to a Twitter thread here whose author refers to that same pictograph panel and offers a different explanation.  He believes the figures with the horns draw from bighorn sheep, who are most sexually active during the summer monsoon season, with males banging their heads against each other to prove their prowess.  This is also the time when adequate rainfall is critical to the success of the harvest, and the author believes that the relationship between rutting bighorn sheep and summer rains is woven into the figure's headdress.  He goes on to show how the elongated shapes could represent downpours called microbursts common during the summer monsoons.  The figures would then represent not death but the hope for a bountiful harvest.  It's an interesting theory well worth considering, although it would seem to be a bit of a stretch.  But who knows, it could be accurate.  In any event, here's my photo of the pictographs in question.

Journeys of Discovery in an Enchanted Land

I'm happy to say my new book, The Slickrock Desert: Journeys of Discovery in an Endangered American Wilderness, is hot off the presses.  Besides the usual distribution channels (Amazon, Ingram, etc.), I'm excited to announce that Atenera Press (www.atenera.com)  has signed a distribution agreement with Mountain Press of Missoula, Montana, a respected publisher of outdoor-related books for over 70 years.  You may recognize them as the publisher of the series of Roadside Geology books covering numerous states.  My book is also available in a number of retail bookstores, including Bright Side Bookshop in Flagstaff, Arizona and The King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City.  I encourage you to support any of these retailers, and if your local bookstore doesn't carry it, ask them to do so.

As I say in the book, reading about the desert is one thing, but to really get a feel for it, you need to get out and pay it a visit.  If summertime in southern Utah isn't your thing, start planning a visit for October, my favorite month in the desert. Summer crowds are long gone, spring crowds won't be there for months.  The days are comfortably warm, and the snows of winter have not yet arrived.  It's a time of golden yellow cottonwoods and coral-colored cliffs blazoned against azure blue skies--the perfect time to explore a rugged land like no other on earth.  Get out and enjoy it!

Slickrock Desert book nearly ready

 After two years of serious writing, my new book, The Slickrock Desert: Journeys of Discovery in an Endangered American Wilderness, is in final production. It uses stories of my own explorations of the canyons and mesas of the Four Corners region of the American Southwest to introduce the reader to its history, natural history, geology, ecology, and what we know of its earliest inhabitants. I've already received welcome testimonials from such notable people as the author Stephen Trimble, whose works include The Capitol Reef Reader and Redrock Stories, and Carolyn Z. Shelton, Assistant Monument Manager (retired) of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Both Stephen and Carolyn read my entire manuscript and gave me welcome feedback on how to make it the best book possible.

I just received printed copies of what is called an "Advance Reader Copy." The "ARC" is very close to the final book but usually needs a little more editing before publication. ARCs go to book reviewers so they have time to review the book and write about it in advance of publication.  The publication date for The Slickrock Desert is March 15, and everything is on track for that date. I only needed to edit a few lines of text, adjust a few margins, and optimize some of the photos for best reproduction quality. The final files are off to the printer now, with the first print run to be completed in a couple of weeks. Another couple of weeks to get those copies into distribution and it will be ready to go.  Here's what the ARC looks like. The final book will be nearly identical. To learn more, take a look at the Atenera Press website at www.atenera.com.

State of Utah to Challenge Biden's Restoration of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase

The State of Utah has decided to move forward with a challenge to President Biden's restoration of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments. They have hired a law firm (at $498/hour) to research potential litigation based on recent opinions from some members of the U.S. Supreme Court that the Antiquities Act is the wrong way to protect large landscapes in southern Utah. This action came several days after about one hundred members of a coalition of Hopi, Navajo, Utes, Ute Mountain Utes, and Zuni marched on the Utah State Capitol to protest the potential lawsuit.  Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has set up a website for you to share your thoughts with Utah Governor Cox. You can access the site HERE.