Wilderness Archives - Wild About Utah

October 10, 2022October 12, 2022

Haunted in the Forest

Leaf Skeleton Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer — Witchy Ghost of a Plant
Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

Leaf Skeleton
Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

Jaw Bone
Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

Tree Canker
Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

Costume Change Chrysalis
Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

When life throws scary at you, what do you do? As we increasingly consider mental and emotional health issues and strategies, I find that my answer is that I go to the forest. Of course, I go there when things are going smoothly too, but I agree with Henry David Thoreau when he wrote, “When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood.” He, in fact, recommended the “most dismal swamp,” but that is a little too slimy for me. I will stick with solid soil.

A few weeks ago I spied a bat dangling from the bricks on my front porch as I gazed at the moon just as I had asked my young students to do. It reminded me of how in Janell Cannon’s picture book Stellaluna, a young bat survives a predatory owl’s attacks, falling “down, down…faster and faster, into the forest below.” She clings to a branch until her strength gives out, then “down, down again she dropped” into an unlikely predicament. Bats and harvest moons are iconic figures of this season, and as I ventured out for a sanity walk in the Cache National Forest, everywhere I looked I saw more.

Fall forests are full of chilling scenes, and I was first struck by a gruesome sap bleed from a gaping evergreen canker. The yellow ooze seeping seemed beautiful somehow. I don’t remember ever being so captivated by a wounded plant, and because I lingered, I also spotted a chrysalis containing a caterpillar’s costume change on a neighboring tree. Next to that were the witchy remains of other withering forbs.

Beneath my hiking boots was a toothy jaw grinning amid fragile leaf skeletons scattered on the forest floor. Even as I swapped away the cobwebs I didn’t see ahead until it was too late, the eerie beauty of nature eased the tormenting worries in my life. There’s a Chinese Proverb that says, “You can only go halfway into the darkest forest; then you are coming out the other side.”

A good walk outside is great for the distressed heart and mind. I needed to find the unlikely power in autumn icons. As Mary Shelley wrote for Frankenstein, “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” Next time you are frightened by the unknowns or scarred by the realities, consider falling into a forest.

I’m Shannon Rhodes, and I’m wild about Utah.

Credits:

Images: Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Text & Voice: Shannon Rhodes, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University https://edithbowen.usu.edu/
Additional Reading Links: Shannon Rhodes

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah Posts by Shannon Rhodes https://wildaboututah.org/author/shannon-rhodes/

Cannon, Janell. 1993. Stellaluna. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company. https://www.amazon.com/Stellaluna-Janell-Cannon/dp/0152062874/ref=sr_1_1

Shelley, Mary Woolstonecraft. 1818. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/84/84-h/84-h.htm

Thoreau, Henry David and Brooks Atkinson. 2000. Walden and Other Writings. New York: Modern Library. https://www.amazon.com/Walden-Other-Writings-Modern-Library/dp/0679600043

July 18, 2022August 23, 2023

John Muir and Wilderness

I’ve known of John Muir much of my life. A recent kayaking trip to Glacier Bay in Alaska added to my appreciation for this remarkable early American naturalist, author, and Wilderness advocate. Muir first visited Glacier Bay in 1879, where he witnessed firsthand how glaciers transform the landscape, bolstering his prescient theory of glaciology. Upon returning home, I did a bit of research on his 1877 visit to Utah. Muir was taken by the wild beauty of the Wasatch Mountains as he so eloquently expressed.

“The glacial developments of these superb ranges are sharply sculptured peaks and rests, with ample wombs between them, where the ancient snows of the glacial period were collected and transformed into ice and ranks of profound shadowy canyons, while moraines commensurate with the lofty fountains extend into the valleys forming far the grandest series of glacial monuments I have yet seen this side of the Sierra.”

In addition to Muir’s contributions to understanding how glaciers sculpt landscapes, he used his political acumen to initiate the Wilderness movement, culminating with the 1964 Wilderness Act approved by the U.S. Congress. “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” – written by Howard Zahniser, the principle author of the Act.

The U.S. Congress has preserved 110 million acres of the fifty states since the Wilderness Act, 1.16 million of which are found in Utah. About half are on National Forest lands, the remaining residing with the Bureau of Land Management agency. Another 3.2 million acres are managed as Roadless lands titled Wilderness Study Areas.

Other Muir quotes which champion wilderness- “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.” and “Wilderness is a necessity… there must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls.”

I’ve spent many years as a seasonal Wilderness ranger and Wilderness advocate here in N. Utah in the Naomi and Wellsville Wilderness. Managing these precious spaces to retain its wilderness character has become ever more challenging with a warmer, dryer climate enhancing wildfire, flooding, and loss to massive insect outbreaks. As Glacier Bay and Glacier National park glaciers retreat ever deeper into bays and meadows, their names may become a misnomer.

Although John Muir’s famous “Muir Glacier” had receded several miles away from where it once met the ocean, I feel blessed the few tidewater glaciers we encountered yet remain. And I feel further blessed that the U.S. Congress has seen fit to protect Utah’s wildlands by deploying the Wilderness Act- “…where the Earth and its Community of Life will remain untrammeled by man…”

Jack Greene for the Bridgerland Audubon Society, and I’m wild about Utah!

Credits:

Picture:
Audio: Courtesy & © J. Chase and K.W. Baldwin https://upr.org
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Additional Reading: Lyle W Bingham, Webmaster, and Jack Greene, Author, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading:

Jack Greene’s Postings on Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/author/jack/

Glacier Bay From Above(Video), John Hopkins Inlet, Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve, US National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=C16C2BB8-1DD8-B71C-0783F58C054561C2

Fields, Lauren, Here’s what John Muir — the father of national parks —thought about early Utah, The Deseret News, Apr 20, 2018, https://www.deseret.com/2018/4/21/20643789/here-s-what-john-muir-the-father-of-national-parks-thought-about-early-utah

John Muir in Utah, Utah Stories from the Beehive Archive, Utah Humanities, https://www.utahhumanities.org/stories/items/show/180

Public Law 88-577 a.k.a. Wilderness Act, Sept 3, 1964, U.S. Government Publishing Office: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-78/pdf/STATUTE-78-Pg890.pdf

Biek, Bob, Willis, & Ehler, Buck, Utah’s Glacial Geology, Survey Notes, Utah Geological Survey, Utah Department of Natural Resources, September 2010, https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/utahs-glacial-geology/

Hansen, Wallace R, The Geologic Story of the Uinta Mountains, Geological Survey(USGS), US Department of the Interior, 1969, 1975, 1983, https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1291/report.pdf

February 22, 2021March 12, 2022

Finding Remoteness

‘Remote’ is not a characteristic I would assign to the city center, a major metropolis like where I grew up. But I also remember summers spent high in the crown of our old magnolia tree, where my 8 year old self may have begged to differ. There, I found wildness—forgot about time and place and the civilization that occupied them. Finding Remoteness

What does ‘remote’ mean? Take a moment, if you will, and conjure a memory—to the most remote place you’ve ever been. Where are you? Why did that particular place come to mind? Was it the distance from cities and towns? Was it the absence of other people? Was it the darkness? The quiet? What makes a place “remote?”

This question has been tumbling around in my head for a while. So, naturally, I took to the internet for answers. A definition: ‘remote’—an adjective—“(of a place) situated far from the main centers of population; distant.” Seems straightforward at first, but the quality of remoteness is open for interpretation. I might argue, for instance, that Lhasa—the Tibetan capital of almost half a million people—is far more remote than the most isolated corner of Utah’s redrock labyrinth. Perhaps that’s an apples to oranges comparison, though.

Bear-shaped remote region in the Bear River Range Data and Photo Credit: Hunter Baldridge — Bear-shaped remote region
in the Bear River Range
Data and Photo Credit: Hunter Baldridge

The Means family from Florida is trying to quantify remoteness and document the most remote place in all 50 states. Project Remote, they call it, defines remoteness as “the point that is the farthest straight-line distance from a road or city [or] town.” According to the Means family, Utah’s most remote location is deep in the High Uintas Wilderness–9.5 miles from the nearest road; a two-day trek from the closest trailhead.

Project Remote inspired me. Their definition seemed reasonable enough, but I was curious about whittling down the parameters of ‘remoteness.’ I wanted to identify the most remote location in Cache County, where I live; so, I reached out to USU Geographic Information Systems instructor, Shannon Belmont, who has been working on this question with her students for several years. As it turns out, the general consensus from Belmont’s class projects produced a fittingly bear shaped swathe of canyons and peaks in the high country of the Bear River Range as the most remote region in the county. There were dozens of other definitions offered through Belmont’s project, of course.

‘Remote’ seems a relative term—relative to the perspective of a traveler and their perceived distance or isolation from the center of whatever world is familiar. When avalanche danger in my home range subsides, I’ll click boots into skis and plow my way to the heart of that bear-shaped expanse of peaks and canyons, trying to find what ‘remote’ means there. Then, perhaps I’ll redefine the word entirely— changing it by season, mode of transport, or state of mind. Until then, maybe I’ll find an old tree to get lost in.

I’m Josh Boling, and I’m Wild About Utah!Defining Remote

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright Josh Boling, Photographer
Uintas Graphic: Courtesy Josh Boling & Hunter Baldridge, Copyright © Hunter Baldridge
Sound: Courtesy & Copyright J Chase and K.W. Baldwin, Utah Public Radio
Text: Josh Boling, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University https://edithbowen.usu.edu/
Additional Reading Links: Josh Boling

Sources & Additional Reading

https://www.outsideonline.com/2314611/roads-around-nowhere

Project Remote, https://www.projectremote.com/

Utah’s Remote Spot in the High Unitas, Project Remote, October 3, 2019, https://www.projectremote.com/blog/utah-remote-spot/

Belmont, Shannon, Final Project – Identifying the most remote location in Cache County, GEOG/WILD1800, SJ & Jessie Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University, https://wildaboututah.org/wp-content/uploads/boling.josh_.GW1800_Final_Project_RemoteLocation.pdf

August 1, 2016July 10, 2022

Sacred Mountains

I just completed teaching a 5 day Utah Master Naturalist course through USU extension on Utah mountains. The course allowed me to revisit the immense influence these lofty lumps in the earth’s crust have had on my life, and the life of so many others.

It was mountains that drew me here from the flatlands of Michigan. They have become my main source of spiritual renewal, of aesthetic pleasure and recreation. I run, ski, and hike their trails, explore their hidden canyons and forests, revel in the rich tapestry of wildlife and wildflowers that adorns their slopes, and at present, need I say, seek relief from summer’s heat.

Having served 11 seasons as a seasonal Wilderness ranger for the USFS, I was able to explore much of the backcountry in the Bear River and Wellsville mountains of N. Utah. Beyond these, I’ve been atop Kings peak, the Lasals, Abajos, Cedar and Pine Valley Mountains, the Raft Rivers, and many of our high plateaus. But this is small potatoes considering Wikipedia lists 65 others yet to be explored in our state.

Mountains are what we are. Without them, Brigham Young and the Saints would have continued their exodus on to other parts of the west for the rich resources they bless us with.
Mountains = water. This liquid gift provides over 80% of Utah’s water as they do for most other western states. In the early years, they offered timber and rock for structures, including temples, tabernacles, and other historic buildings. Cool breezes followed canyons down to give relief from intense summer heat, and grew forage for cattle and sheep. The Oquirrh mountains on the west edge of Salt Lake valley are host to one of the world’s richest mines yielding approximately 25 percent of the country’s copper, 12 tons of gold, and 120 tons of silver each year.

Going beyond Utah and the west, it is water from mountain glaciers that support over 2 billion people in India, China and several middle east/Eurasian countries. With rapidly receding glaciers from a warming planet, this has become a grave concern.
On a lessor note, I recently accompanied a group of college students on a YNP pica inventory to follow their population trends as they are being impacted by a changing climate.
I’ll conclude with an 1877 quote from early American naturalist John Muir upon first entering the Salt Lake valley.

“The mountains rise grandly round about this curious city, the Zion of the new Saints, so grandly that the city itself is hardly visible. The Wasatch range, snow-laden and adorned with glacier-sculpted peaks, stretches continuously along the eastern horizon, forming the boundary of the Great Salt Lake basin; while across the valley of the Jordan southwestward from here, you behold the Oquirrh Range, about as snowy and lofty as the Wasatch.

The glacial developments of these superb ranges are sharply sculpted peaks and crests, with ample wombs between them where the ancient snows of the glacial period where collected and transformed into ice, and ranks of profound shadowy canyons, while moraines commensurate with the lofty fountains extend into the valleys, forming far the grandest series of glacial monuments I have yet seen this side of the Sierra.”

This is Jack Greene reading and writing for Wild About Utah.

Sacred Mountains-Credits:
Images: Courtesy and Copyright Hilary Shughart
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon Society
Sacred Mountains-Additional Reading:

Wasatch Mountains, History to Go, Utah.gov, https://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/the_land/wasatchmountains.html

Geology of Utah, History to Go, Utah.gov, https://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/the_land/geologyofutah.html

Logan Ranger District, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/uwcnf/recarea/?recid=8985

Hylland, Rebecca, What are Igneous, Sedimentary & Metamorphic Rocks?, Glad You Asked, Utah Geological Survey, https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/igneous-sedimentary-metamorphic-rocks/

Sacred Mountains-Top