Meet our Guests: Peter Sanzenbacher

Peter Sanzenbacher

Wildlife Biologist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Shoshone, CA

11/16/21

     Wearing an out-of-place New England Patriots hat in the Mojave Desert near the town of Shoshone, California, Peter Sanzenbacher shares his main project for the past four years or so: conserving the California condor, an iconic species of the Western United States. He says that this species, which almost went extinct in the wild in the 1970s, faces difficulties surviving amidst a rapidly developing world. Today, the main cause of condor mortality on the landscape is lead poising, ingested from people shooting wildlife and condors scavenging the carcasses. However, another particular threat to the species has turned out to be the wind energy industry. As more and more turbines pop up, they become dangerous obstacles for birds that call breezy areas their home.

     As a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Peter attempts to bridge the gap between condors and hunters and wind businesses alike. He makes sure to emphasize that he is working with industry in partnership, not fighting against it. In conversation, Peter shares a guiding question of his recent work: “how do we approach this in a way where we can protect condors and have a source of renewable energy on the landscape?” Peter hopes his work can be a model for other regions encountering the conflicts between species conservation and green energy.

By Ruthie Colburn

Meet our Guests: Brian Brown

Brian Brown

Owner of China Ranch

Tecopa, CA

11/18/21

     Brian Brown is the owner and operator of China Ranch, a date farm and desert oasis near Tecopa, California. In the arid Death Valley, the rarity of water makes China Ranch one of few riparian areas, bursting with cottonwoods, willows, and date trees. Rich with geology, botany, birds, and a long record of human activity, China Ranch preserves the history of the Old Spanish Trail, and the wildlife that rely on the abundant water source of Willow Creek.

     Brian and his late wife Bonnie bought the property and changed its course by planting many varieties of date trees and operating a business selling dates and date-related products. They made a commitment to the land and the species that rely on it through a conservation easement with the Nature Conservancy. The land is protected from further development and will be maintained into the future for a healthy ecosystem.

     After a morning of cleaning up fallen palm fronds from the date trees, Brian took the Westies on a tour of his property. He talked about the impacts of a recent fire that burned over 20 acres of riparian habitat. China Ranch and the Nature Conservancy have made a commitment to restoring the burnt habitat for the many species of wildlife that find solace in one of Death Valley’s few oases.

By Haley Post

Meet our Guests: Cameron Barrows

Cameron Barrows

Research Ecologist, University of California, Riverside

Sand to Snow National Monument, CA

11/14/21

     Bearing southern California’s beating sun like a true local, Cameron Barrows, a retired UC Riverside research ecologist describes his efforts to model climate change and its impacts on the habitat of the famous Joshua tree.

     This charismatic desert plant is in danger of becoming extinct in the coming years, a fact that has motivated conservationists in California to come up with plans to save it. One such scenario involves protecting the swath of land between Joshua trees’ current habitat and the land that models show could be their future habitat, creating a migration corridor for the species. Unfortunately, this corridor would be 100 miles long, and Cam is not convinced the trees could make the trek. From beneath his baseball ball cap, Cam chuckles incredulously, “we're talking thousands of years to get that 100 miles, and climate change is going to happen in 20 to 30 years.” At the breakneck pace of climate change, the species will not be able to move quickly enough.

     Cameron does see hope in “climate refugia” – the place where current and future habitats overlap – because the trees don't have to move. He says that these areas should be the top priority for Joshua tree allies. While this strategy would result in less acreage of protected habitat, Cam believes it will ensure the survival of the population of Joshua trees that still have a chance.

Given that Joshua tree habitat also serves as prime locations for solar panels, Cam says that the smaller land requirements of focusing on refugia will “open the door for people who want to do energy production that is going to get us away from fossil fuels.” He believes that to ultimately help Joshua trees and species like them, we need to be dealing with the root cause of their demise: humans putting carbon in the atmosphere.

By Kevin Faeustle

Meet our Guests: Vince Signorotti

Vince Signorotti

Vice President, Resource & Real Estate, EnergySource LLC

Calipatria, CA

11/11/21

     Vince Signorotti is a Vice President at EnergySource, a California-based renewable energy company focused specifically on renewable geothermal energy. At their John L. Featherstone geothermal plant next to the Salton Sea in southern California, EnergySource drills thousands of feet into the Earth to harness salty groundwater that has been heated by the planet’s internal energy. They pump this brine to the surface to generate electricity from the steam it produces. Vince explained that this is while the process is expensive, it is carbon neutral and produces only minor byproducts. This is one of eleven plants operated by EnergySource in the Salton Sea area that collectively produce 380 megawatts of energy for the greater Phoenix area.

     While touring the geothermal facility with Semester in the West, Vince explained with excitement that EnergySource has developed technology to extract lithium from the brine they use to generate energy. With predictions that all vehicles will be electric by 2035, Vince and his company expect demand for lithium to be used in batteries to increase dramatically. Unlike most other forms of lithium mining in operation today, EnergySource’s extraction technology requires a very small footprint: together with the geothermal equipment (which provides the electricity for the extraction process) the John L. Featherstone plant will take up only 33 acres on the surface. While this technology is not currently running they have plans to start building the additional infrastructure this coming spring.

By Wes Johnston

Meet our Guests: Matt Radar

Matt Radar

BLM Wildlands Fire Fighter

Shoshone, CA

11/15/21

Matt Radar, a BLM Wildlands Fire Fighter, joined us in our Shoshone California to camp to tell us about his career in natural resource management and firefighting.  After graduating from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with a degree in biology, Matt worked briefly in research labs but quickly discovered that he wanted work outside and in conservation.  He trained to become a timber feller, one of the more hazardous jobs in wildland firefighting and also one of the most challenging.

Earlier in the day we met him briefly at the China Ranch, where he was felling and cutting hazard trees from the recent Willow Fire on the Ranch.  Energetic and upbeat, Matt also generously shared his advice about how to get jobs in natural resource fields:  be persistent, take unpaid internships to get your foot in the door, do good work, and people will notice you.  And sometimes, trust serendipity. 

By Phil Brick

Photo credit: Neave Fleming

Meet our Guests: Jon Christensen

Jon Christensen

Environmental Historian (UCLA), Journalist

Sand to Snow National Monument, CA

11/12/2021

As a long-time journalist covering the West, Jon Christensen has long reported on and taught about the West’s most archetypal quality: conflict. Whether it’s early settler conflicts, public lands extremism, the rural-urban divide, water wars, or recent megafires, the West has long appeared in media as the American region of crisis.

To challenge the historical conflict-mythos, Jon strives to forefront stories that upend it. To provide the Westies with an example, Jon played his feature-length documentary “Politics and the Environment of the New West,” a depiction of former Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s career. Harry Reid legislated numerous, often collaborative conservation decisions in Nevada, satisfying many, but not all, ranchers, hunters, environmentalists, farmers, and corporations. Portraying Senator Reid as a champion of grassroots representation and bipartisanship, Jon highlighted a rarely heard-of occurrence in today’s politically polarizing climate. He then encouraged Westies to do the same: dig into their collection of field experiences and help create a new, inspiring narrative of the West.

By Fielding Schaefer

Meet our Guests: Frazier Haney

Frazier Haney

Executive Director, The Wildlands Conservancy

Sand to Snow National Monument, CA

11/13/2021

Frazier Haney, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy, works hard to protect wild lands. When the land outside Joshua Tree National Park was threatened with development they started “the campaign to fire people up” to fight a proposed wind energy project. Getting community members on board with preserving the local wilderness is a major part of Frazier’s advocacy. When talking about protecting wild lands, he proudly produced three thick reams of paper, bearing signatures against the wind farm on Black Lava Butte.  Frazier asserts, “you can’t stop a development based on beauty. But you can inspire people with beauty.” There is tension between preservation and developing green energy. While we need to transition away from carbon-based energy, he believes the place to build renewable energy technology is in already developed places. This could mean solar panels on top of buildings, or wind energy remade in derelict wind farm sites.

The Wildlands Conservancy acquires private land that may be developed near and between current wild areas. This is important because it allows animals to utilize larger ranges of land and migrate between different areas. Continuous undeveloped land is necessary for biodiversity and species longevity.  Frazier says of the Sand to Snow National Monument, “it’s a beautiful place. And I think that’s enough reason to save a place.”

By Reya Fore

Meet our Guests: Kerry Holcomb

Kerry Holcomb

Biologist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Mojave Desert, CA

11/12/21

     Deep in the Mojave Desert, giant boulders are playfully stacked atop one another while Joshua trees tilt and dance in the mid-day sun. The scene fits better into a Dr. Seuss novel than a modern-day conservation story.

      Amidst the fantasia, Kerry Holcomb, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), proclaims, “you can’t do conservation if you ignore the human element.”

      After moving from Appalachia to the desert, Kerry turned his focus to the endangered desert tortoise. At one time, desert tortoises were the dominant herbivores on the landscape, sequestering carbon and changing the mosaic of plant communities. But now, Kerry explains, “we have functionally extinct populations [of desert tortoises] in parts of the Mojave.” And he believes ravens are to blame.

     Thanks to the advent of the air conditioner, non-native people started settling in the desert, and raven populations began to multiply rapidly. Ravens are generalists, meaning they can adapt to a wide range of ecological conditions. Ravens adapted well to their new food source at landfills and as their populations soared, they added the desert tortoise to their menu as well.

     Both ravens and tortoises are holy to the Mojave and Chemehuevi people, but Kerry explains, “the Tribes see the dichotomy of the tortoise being higher than the ravens.”

     In a desperate attempt to save the desert tortoise, the USFWS has resorted to oiling, which causes suffocation of raven eggs to diminish their population. But, with new houses popping up in the desert every day, Kerry recognizes that the desert tortoise has a human problem, not a raven problem.

By Josh Matz

Meet our Guests: Valer Clark

Valer Clark

Founder, Cueca Los Ojos

Douglas, AZ

11/8/21

    Decked out in denim and a wide-brimmed sun hat, Valer Clark fills the empty river bed of Silver Creek in a spot about 200 yards north of the U.S. – Mexico Border. “When you skip steps in between, you start to get really big problems,” she says. For Clark, this mindset has been central to her organization, Cuenca Los Ojos, in its work to restore the ecosystems of the ranches it owns along the border. By installing thousands of rock dams, or gabions, on creeks and streams, Clark has managed to slow erosion, increase vegetation, ameliorate water quality, and diminish flooding over thirty miles of border.

     Clark is a native New Yorker and “ended up West by accident” after an extended vacation turned real estate venture. It is logical to question how a city dweller would want to work on land along the border, but there is more than enough work to keep a New Yorker busy. To Clark, this work is necessary to sustain wildlife and support water storage in one of the most biodiverse areas in North America. With four bioregions, a migratory loop to the Rocky Mountains, the Chihuahuan Desert to the East and the Sonoran to the West, this land is environmentally priceless. There are many problems that arise when caring for land long-term along the border. Clark hopes that with more and more animals appearing on the land due to her intensive management practices, the value of this space will become apparent, and be more likely to receive future protection from owners to come.

By Elio Van Gorden

Meet our Guests: Antonia Morales

Antonia Morales

Grassroots Activist

El Paso, Texas

11/3/21

Under an eminent domain claim, the city of El Paso has plans to raze a neighborhood and build a sports stadium. The neighborhood, Durangito, is the oldest in the city. The apartment of Antonia Morales, affectionately known as Toñita, is one such building.

      When 92-year-old Toñita moved into her Durangito apartment in 1967, the neighborhood was in a state of economic collapse. Prostitution, robbery, and drugs were the avenues of survival for many of its denizens, until Toñita stepped in as what historian David Romo calls “the real leader of the struggle to save Durangito.” Toñita worked tirelessly to help bring economic security to the neighborhood. Now stadium development is undoing the efforts of her struggle.

While the developers claim the stadium will bring in revenue, Toñita knows better. The same was said of the baseball stadium across town, yet hardly any of its revenue returned to serve the surrounding community.

When in 2016 developers began buying out residents of Durangito en masse, Toñita refused. They threatened to cut her water and power if she didn’t accept their offer of $14,000, she told them to go ahead, she wasn’t leaving.

Recently, Toñita’s act of resistance was documented and circulated on media outlets. With widespread support and visibility, the city cannot make her go quietly. And go she won’t. “I’ve never stopped fighting,” Toñita says. “My life has always been about struggle and fight. And that’s why I’m struggling to save this community.”

By Nicki Caddell

Meet our Guests: John Kurc

John Kurc

Freelance Photographer and Filmmaker

Tucson, AZ

11/9/2021

In the YouTube video player, a mountainside covered in creosote bush erupts in plumes of dust and debris as if it has just been struck by an artillery shell. This is footage shot by John Kurc, a professional photographer and filmmaker, of dynamiting in Arizona’s Guadalupe Canyon to make way for the new wall on the US/Mexico border. Up until 2020, John photographed weddings and concerts, but as these two sectors virtually disappeared during the COVID-19 pandemic, he had time to focus his lens elsewhere.

John began to document the border and the issues surrounding it, inspired by a trip to Nogales, Mexico a year earlier. This documentation has been far from easy. John tells stories of the many negative interactions he has had with Border Patrol officials and the contractors building the wall, which is why he now wears a body cam whenever he is in the field collecting footage. He spent countless hours carefully observing the movements of crews building the wall so that he could time his drone flights to film the blasting. John is in the midst of creating a documentary that depicts the human suffering and decline of plant and animal populations caused by the border wall. The film will be released in the next couple of years although John wishes that it could reach viewers even sooner to highlight the pressing crises on the border.

By Morgan Sharp

Meet our Guests: Elizabeth Parra

Elizabeth Parra

Interpretive Ranger, Texas State Parks

Hueco Tanks State Park, TX

11/5/21

Elizabeth Parra works as a State Park Ranger at Hueco Tanks State Park, near her hometown of El Paso, Texas. Elizabeth grew up camping and hiking with her family in a nearby forest, Ruidosa, which inspired her love of science and natural world. As an adult, Elizabeth works to help people emotionally connect with the natural resources around them. “It’s super special when you see someone out here, young or old, and they go ‘Wow, I never knew.’”

The Hueco Tanks area is ancestral land to many different communities, including the Jornada Mogollan, Mescalero Apache, the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, Comanche, and Kiowa peoples. Hundreds of Jornada Mogollan petroglyphs are tucked away in corners of the mountains at Hueco Tanks. “What makes this place special is the geology and the amount of human history we have here,” Elizabeth says.

Part of Elizabeth’s job is to protect cultural resources like the petroglyphs from damage. However, visitors have carved into walls containing petroglyphs in numerous areas around the park, resulting in a separation of Hueco Tanks into self-guided and ranger-guided tours. Over the past two years, new graffiti has increased, as the pandemic has brought greater crowds into the park. Elizabeth says that the desire to protect the pictographs from other writing is based on their historical importance and the effort that went into creating them. “A lot of these images are grounded in ceremony, tradition, their own historic record as well — compared to me buying a Sharpie at Walmart for five dollars and just writing my name.”

By Emma Fletcher-Frazer

Meet our Guests: Adriana Lopez

Adriana Lopez

Musician and Educator

El Paso, TX

11/3/21

     Adri Lopez’s powerful voice resounds throughout the city of El Paso. A musician and educator, Adri uses her vocal talent to fight for what she believes in: protecting culture and history in El Paso while spreading el cariño—a word with no direct English translation that refers to a special kind of love with tenderness, something that Adri feels is unique to El Paso and Juárez, its sister city directly across the Mexico border.

     Adri was born and raised in El Paso and has made her way back home after a decade away. In her time away from her home city she heard many narratives about El Paso that weren’t true to her experience. Wanting to correct these false conceptions, she gained an understanding and appreciation for the rich stories and history of El Paso. This experience brought her home—to the place where she feels el cariño.

     Led by her passion for writing, poetry, and especially music, Adri uses her talents to fight. Duranguito, El Paso’s oldest neighborhood is under threat by developers and the city council to be demolished to make space for a new stadium. Adri sees the importance of this place, for its historical value as the oldest part of the city, but also for the diversity of culture that it holds as a place of border and a first stop for many different groups entering the U.S. In the fight to protect Duranguito, Adri, along with historian David Romo, produces music with messages of revolution. Adri and David’s pieces vary in style, but all fall into the musical traditions of past residents of Duranguito, a nod to the diversity of culture that this place holds and that Adri hopes to preserve.

By Katie Wallace

Video credit: Haley Post

Meet our Guests: David Romo

David Romo

Historian, musician, and author

El Paso, Texas

11/3/21

The streets of El Paso, Texas come alive through the songs and stories of David Romo. Donning black leather and an acoustic-electric guitar, David leads Semester in the West students along grided sidewalks, past colorful murals and beside brick buildings. He tells tales of El Paso’s historic inhabitants—indigenous Mansos and Mexican revolutionaries, Pachuco anarchists and Spanish spies—through the form of narrative melody. For David, music is a force for rebellion. It is a way to impart the unspoken and often repressed stories of those who have shaped what is now U.S.-Mexico borderland.

David grew up traversing the illusive boundary between El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Chihuahua. He considers himself a fronterizo: a person who moves fluidly between the U.S.-Mexico border. “But,” he laments, “I spent a large part of my life trying to get as far away from both of these cities as possible.” It took four years at Stanford, two-and-a-half in Jerusalem, and five in France before he realized the cultural richness he had been seeking was in his hometown all along. After moving back to El Paso, David began chronicling the Texas city and its Mexican counterpart by blending genres of history, ethnography, and music. His most recent publication, Ringside Seat to a Revolution, uses a method called “psychogeographic” mapping to tell the untold tales of the Mexican Revolution. Today, David uses his voice to fight the industrial development of El Paso’s historic neighborhood, Duranguito. Through art, activism, and history, David reinvigorates old narratives to inspire new passions for the cities of the border. 

By Kate Joss

Meet our Educators: Victoria Blanco

Victoria Blanco

Writer

El Paso, TX

11/1/21 – 11/5/21

Standing at a lookout point above a sprawling cityscape, writer Victoria Blanco points out the sister cities of El Paso, Texas and Juárez, Chihuahua. Born and raised in El Paso, Victoria is deeply familiar with the richness and complexity that emerges from the U.S. - Mexico border. The border severs what Victoria calls a “cultural corridor” that runs south from El Paso to Juarez. She explains that this corridor is not only responsible for the flow of goods across the border but “also the flow of stories, of food, of families.”

  During a five-day writing workshop, Victoria emphasized the importance of seeing beyond the dominant narratives that mainstream news sources push about the border. She applies this lens to her writing, too: Victoria spoke to how writing genres are both a helpful framework for writing but can also act as a tool of restriction. She encouraged Semester in the West students to “bend the lines of genre” in their writing to tell stories that hold more nuance. In her own writing, Victoria often combines memoir style storytelling with her anthropological research with indigenous communities in Northern Mexico. 

With family on both sides of the border, Victoria is accustomed to hours-long lines that stand between her and loved ones. Victoria is no stranger to the way the border separates but does not let it confine her movement between the two countries.  “They can build their walls as high as they want,” she tells us, “But I’m going to come here with my kids, I’m going to cross the border, I’m going to go visit my in-laws four blocks away. And I’m never going to stop doing it.”

By Alli Shinn

Meet our Educators: Paul Arbetan

Paul Arbetan

Associate Professor of Ecology, Diné College

Tsaile, AZ / Navajo Nation

11/08/21 – 11/24/21

     Paul Arbetan teaches ecology at Diné college in Tsaile, Arizona on the Navajo Nation. After working with the Bureau of Land Management and New Mexico’s Department of Military Affairs, conducting ecological surveys, Paul is well versed in desert life systems. As a professor, he teaches his students to make close observations about the ever-evolving natural world. He reads the landscape closely, paying attention to the function of microscopic bacteria, the changes in vegetation brought about by differing levels of moisture in the air and the humans inhabiting it. Though, he walks faster than an Olympic race-walker, he takes the time to pause and look around. He turns to his students and asks “if seeds are everywhere why does vegetation exhibit patterns on the landscape?” He teaches his students to identify the climate processes and the importance of water availability which affect the types of plants growing in a specific area.

     Paul emphasizes that everything in the natural world is interconnected and undergoes constant change. “Modern ecology, thinks of relationship of organisms and the patterns as this constant evolutionary interplay between the niche space of these plants and the organisms that feed on them. It’s this constant change, constant reshifting of the organisms in the landscape, and to us in our short lifetimes, it just often seems as though it seems pretty constant. But it's not.”

     Although a scientist by trade, Paul looks at science, philosophy, and the arts as different yet all indispensable methods of knowing. After weeks of teaching Semester in the West students about ecology, Paul engaged in conversations not only about desert grasses but also free will and consciousness. Well versed in philosophy Paul says he only knows one thing for sure and that is that he knows absolutely nothing.

By Jade Strapart

Meet our Guests: Bonnie and Billy Pat McKinney

Billy Pat and Bonnie McKinney

Manager and Wildlife Coordinator, El Carmen Land and Conservation Co.

Terlingua, TX

10/29/2021

     Nestled in the heart of the Chihuahuan desert along the Rio Grande lies the old Adams Ranch, a 27,000-acre property that rests on the border of the United States and Mexico. Under the name El Carmen Land and Conservation Company, the ranch is owned by CEMEX USA, a branch of the Mexican multinational concrete and cement manufacturing company, and conservation philanthropist Josiah Austin. The property is managed by Billy Pat and Bonnie McKinney, two Texans passionate about land conservation. Billy Pat, the manager of the ranch, and Bonnie, the wildlife coordinator, work towards restoring this formerly overgrazed land and rebuilding sustainable wildlife populations.

     The ranch was purchased to bridge the gap between Big Bend National Park and Black Gap National Wildlife Area. Bonnie emphasizes the importance of the ranch as a connecting link between contiguous properties and two countries. This piece of unassuming desert brimming with thorny ocotillo and prickly pear cacti on the edge of the Mexican highlands is a known bird migration corridor and habitat for big mammals such as desert bighorn sheep, mule deer, and black bear.

     Bonnie and Billy Pat have worked tirelessly since moving to the ranch in 2007 to conserve the land because, as Bonnie highlights, “we need our wildlife, we need our waters, and we need our landscape.” The two desert dwellers know that the limiting factor for wildlife populations in this area is lack of water availability. To help remedy this issue they have initiated the installation of dozens of water guzzlers—tanks that collect and store rainwater to create a supplemental water source for wildlife. These water guzzlers serve as a lifeline for a multitude of species as the climate gets increasingly warmer and drier.  

Billy Pat conveys his and Bonnie’s conservation philosophy simply, saying “We don’t wear angel wings, we just try to dirty our hands and make something happen.”

By Claire Warncke

Meet our Guests: Richard Graymountain

Richard Graymountain

San Juan Southern Paiute Tribal Councilmember and medicine man

Navajo Mountain, AZ / Navajo Nation

9/26/21

Sitting next to a crackling fire beneath Navajo Mountain, medicine man Richard Graymountain describes the frictions associated with Diné (Navajo) and San Juan Southern Paiute tribal membership in the age of ever-expanding modernity. He observes that young Diné people who have grown up with indoor spaces and the luxuries they provide—electricity, heating and cooling—do not realize the importance of becoming familiar and comfortable on their ancestral land.  

Graymountain is a vestige of declining customs, believing in the importance of traditional cultural values. Passing those on has become more and more difficult with the imposition of Western society, and a pandemic that prevents people from gathering in their typical tight-knit fashion. However, with a spot on the San Juan Southern Paiute tribal council, Graymountain is able to have some influence over the direction and values of the tribe. One impactful and direct way he’s achieved this recovery is by emphasizing the cultural importance of oral tradition. Historically, all accumulated knowledge was passed down in this manner. During his time on the tribal council, Graymountain has endeavored to pass on the Navajo and Paiute languages. Most notably, he has revived forgotten songs by teaching them to children. Through ceremonies, storytelling, and song, Richard Graymountain helps to breathe life into the Navajo and Paiute languages, igniting new generations.

By Ruthie Colburn

Meet our Educators: Joe Pachak

Joe Pachak

Artist & Archeologist

Bluff, UT

10/01/2021-10/08/2021

     “We don’t take this,” says Joe Pachak, holding a pre-historic chisel in his right hand. As an archeologist, Joe recognizes the importance of leaving artifacts in place, their story and context intact. He has been searching the red rock desert for indigenous remnants since he was a young boy roaming Pueblo, CO with his father.  Joe has made home the small town of Bluff, UT working as an artist. With an attentive eye and a kind demeanor, he offers detailed interpretations of rock art pecked into the sandstone panels of Sand Island, along the rim of an oxbow of the San Juan River, Wolf Man, and The Procession. He explains that the petroglyph styles on the panels are Basketmaker, Ute and Glen Canyon Linear. 

Westies hike with Joe over sandstone slabs, stopping to look at flakes, pottery sherds or rusted milk cans. Joe sees charred rocks and determines a pit where a fire burned centuries before. He points to carvings of animals and people desert bighorns playing flutes, snakes, processions on stone – stories from centuries before etched into rock. Every step with Joe is intentional: “we’re walking in the remains of a culture.”

The teachings he has learned from Native American cultures are significant to him. He contributes to documenting panels through drawings and sketches. Each year, Joe constructs wooden sculptures to burn as a symbol of renewal. A pair of 28-foot-tall ravens were burned last winter solstice.To Joe, it is creativity that will “make us actual.” It will help us “find out who we are as individuals and a community.” Placing the chisel back where he found it, he grins, “I say let’s go look at rock art.”

By Neave Fleming

Meet our Educators: Ann Walka

Ann Walka

Poet and author

Bluff, Utah

10/05/2021

            Sheltered from the rain in a sandstone alcove, Ann Walka sits with Westies on the first day of a week-long writing workshop on Comb Ridge, Utah. With an unwaveringly gentle demeanor and warm smile, she instructs students to draw a blind contour of their hand, and then write a list of all the sounds they can hear: exercises to calm the mind. She then sends everyone off to wander, find a spot alone, and use the senses to write boundlessly about the rich desert landscape.

Ann is no stranger to place-based writing. Splitting her time between Bluff, UT and Flagstaff, AZ, Ann writes poetry and stories about the landscape and history of the American West. Using her intimate understanding of the intersection of ecology, geological processes, and human history of places like the Utah desert, Ann inspired Westies to work toward writing a “deep map of place,” a concept inspired by desert writer Ellen Meloy. She encouraged students to draw from their direct experiences, nurture curiosity, notice particularities, use the imagination abundantly, and share work aloud every day. With Ann’s guidance, students wrote weather reports, list poems, origin stories, imaginative pieces about human life in the desert, and personal essays rooted in place. Ann’s welcoming attitude, inventive assignments, and deeply creative spirit allowed Westies to slow down and think deeply about the landscapes around and within them.

By Erika Goodman

Editor’s note: the photo above is from SITW 2018 as we did not take a portrait of Ann on SITW 2021