For the last two summers, Roberta and I have made forays into one of the planet's most stunning landscapes: the wilderness canyonlands of southern Utah. We camped at Natural Bridges National Monument. There, we stood on the top of a pink-orange-red cliff, gazing across a verdant barranca and beyond to the heights of the new Bears' Ears National Monument. It was set aside by President Obama after long consultation with all the stakeholders in the region. President Trump, at the urging of Utah's Republican senators, just announced that he plans to take 85% of the land of Bears' Ears out of National Monument status. No matter that at least half of Utah's citizens, and an overwhelming majority of people like ourselves who spend tourist dollars in the region, and most Americans in general, want all this land to be preserved fully in perpetuity. It is much more valuable as wilderness than it would be if put to any other use. What is now happening to our public lands is a prime example of the disastrous minority rule to which our nation is being subjected.
"Utah: Life Elevated" is the tag line for the state's tourist industry. The Republicans effectively have changed it to "Utah: Life Excavated". They argue that with Trump's action, the land is being put back into "public" hands. As if somehow the public didn't own it already, and won't continue to do so. Bears' Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, also slated for drastic downsizing, were owned by the federal government before they were created, and will remain federal lands afterward. Let no one be fooled by the Republican perversion of the English language. Their idea of "public" use is to lease the land to private mining and ranching interests.
This past summer, Roberta and I drove deep into the Escalante basin on a dirt road, to visit a spectacular rock formation called the Devil's Garden. There we met a German couple and their young children, scampering among the hoodoos and oohing and ahhing in wonder. We had a sweet chat with them. "We have no such landscapes in our country," they said. And I answered: "Remember always: this is yours as much as it is ours!" And they smiled. It was a magical moment of shared humanity, inspired by a landscape unformed by human hands.
You can put a dollar price on the coal, buried for millions of years in the strata of the Escalante basin. You can put a dollar value on the damage that burning that coal will inflict on human beings through climate change. You can put a dollar value on the economic impact of tourism on Utah, which over the long term will far outstrip the dollar value of the coal.
But the glory of that landscape makes a mockery of money. To stand in awe below those mesas is to enter a realm where dollars make no sense, and where one's humanity knows the immeasurable divinity from which it springs.
Since my teen years, I've spent as much of my vacation time as possible in the deserts of the American southwest. I've worn out dozens of hiking boots in the process. And yet I've barely scratched the surface of its vastness. Looking out at the Bears' Ears, I felt their powerful spiritual gravitation. Yet I know not if I'll ever set foot on those austere mesas. Life is only so long, and there are so many trails yet to take.
Though I may never fully traverse these lands, my devotion to their preservation is strong. I doubt I'll ever see the bones of the ancestors of the Native Americans, buried below those grand cliffs. But I am more content to let the ancient ones sleep there in peace. It makes me more fully human to refrain from disturbing them. It makes me more fully human to admire pictures of wilderness areas I'll never have the time to walk. It makes me more fully human to speak out and act in defense of the majesty of the natural world, no matter how little of it I'll ever get to explore. Long after my own bones merge with this beautiful earth, I pray that the forms of these desert lands will continue to be shaped by the processes of nature, and not by dynamite sticks and Caterpillar tractors.
God and Nature are one, and in the canyonlands my heart is uplifted into this spiritual truth like nowhere else. No one yet has surpassed God's handiwork, as anyone who has visited southern Utah can attest. (See God's artistry at Bears' Ears here.) It is time to make life in Utah, and the rest of America, elevated again, by stopping this greedy Republican land-grab in its tracks. (Find out how to get activated here.)