Hold your elders close

Love letter to a burning landscape

In another life, I was smitten by waist-high grasses. By boughs of pine overhanging a dusty trail. Rabbit brush in bloom, its ochre ribbon meandering down canyon. I tucked myself into a landscape that was both mountain and desert. The miles underfoot uncounted to make space to find the words to reflect such a place.

Bears Ears National Monument is burning. And the canyon pictured here is in the flames. The flora that so mesmerized me is the fuel. At over 96,000 acres, the Baylon Fire in Southeast Utah is currently the largest wildfire in the U.S. The Cottonwood Fire, also 96,000 acres, blazes across the Tushar Mountains of central Utah. And still more fires punctuate the landscape between Utah, Western Colorado, and Northern Arizona. I live between blazes.

There is no smoke looming in the sky above me. This is because of wind directionals, but that makes it no less of a miracle. And the blue sky, alongside photos from friends in smokier areas, or the distant smoke plumes I see when hiking to high points, are prompts for mourning.

When each of my grandparents passed, each well into old age, I understood it as an inevitable rite of passage. In my sadness, I held closer than ever my fondest memories, and especially the last time each held me in their arms. Now, I wake each morning and feel the same for the forested canyons I love.

That grief is magnified knowing that our relationship has been so brief. These are the ancestral homelands of the Pueblo, Hopi, Diné, Ute, and San Juan Southern Paiute people. Thirty Tribes hold deep connections to this landscape.

In management vernacular, Bears Ears is described as a cultural landscape, and its protections help guard over 100,000 documented cultural sites. I spoke with a dear friend, an archaeologist who once worked in this burning forest, to better understand how care for those sites are managed during wildfire. I’ve promised myself I would not turn this into a reported piece, however. So I will share that I am cheering on their efforts and the over 1,000 fire personnel as a mantra during my daily walks and runs.

Photo by Jay Kolsch, 2017.

Elk Ridge is a place that unexpectedly embraced me nine years ago. I would drive my little yellow Jeep up between the Bears Ears and spend countless days, weeks, walking, running, and sleeping. Solitary but never alone, I look back at photos and see my friends. In a 2017 story for Runner’s World, I wrote:

The longer I spent in Bears Ears, the less concerned I became about first-world stressors and comforts—the landscape was claiming me as an animal within its kingdom. And I was but one animal among many. Mule-deer encounters were common, and hawks soared overhead. Red ants canyoneered through grains of sand, a scorpion burrowed into my breakfast, and biting flies couldn’t get enough of my salty skin. On the Lower Indian Creek trail, I crossed paths with a bear cub—cuddly, with brown fur, adorable tiny paws, and chubby little butt topped with a fluff-ball tail. We briefly stared into each other’s eyes before retreating in opposite directions; Mama Bear, we both knew, wouldn’t be far behind. One night, deep in Dark Canyon, I awoke to something soft and furry in my arms—a skunk had sought warmth and refuge spooning me in my sleeping bag. Thankfully, it chose not to spray.

Internet trolls loved to harass me over the skunk story. And yet, all I had to do to move beyond those bullies was drive away from cell service and onto the plateau, that world of truth.

Fire is truth. This hangs heavy, unavoidable while writing a book about how we are literally killing the Colorado River and simultaneously overheating the planet. This week, Lake Powell dropped to its lowest point of the year, a notch above its record trough. This, despite efforts to prop Powell up by draining extra water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream. The firefighting efforts are now drawing water from Powell to fight the blaze. This is a use of the precious water source I can fully support.

My heart is holding a lot right now. Too much, it seems. And maybe that’s the heart capacity we need to discover to keep putting one foot, one word in front of the other. Keep your loved ones close; this includes landscapes. You never know when it will be the last time you spend with them in their present space.

🤎

Morgan